


Lonelier Thing

by Energybeing



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chuck (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 02:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7135475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Energybeing/pseuds/Energybeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two people, at a slight angle to the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note: I do not own Buffy or Chuck, so please don’t sue me for using them.
> 
> This is set roughly seven years after the events of ‘Chosen’, and about a year before ‘Chuck Vs the Masquerade'.

Willow didn’t know exactly where she was. That was kind of the point. She had been on her way to London from somewhere in Somerset, but then she’d seen this wood. There was nothing that required her in London – well, there wasn’t really anything that required her attention anywhere these days. She’d been staring absently out of the window when she’d seen the wood, and she’d realized that she just couldn’t face going into a city, filled with people moving around as though they had a purpose, some place they needed to get to. A city wasn’t the place for someone aimless.

So she’s gotten out of the car, told her driver to carry on without her, and she’d headed into the wood. She wasn’t really dressed for a forest ramble, and her shoes weren’t really up to it. Willow didn’t care. That wasn’t why she was there. She was there so that she could just walk, without anyone bothering her. She could open herself up, feel nature all around her – that much was left to her, at least – and she could just walk.

So that was what she had done. She had moved further into the woods, walking for hours until she was no longer entirely sure where she was. Willow could find the road, if she needed to, but right then she just… walked. She moved through the forest, thinking of nothing much.

Willow wasn’t sure how many hours had passed, but eventually she heard something besides herself and the birds. It sounded like a galloping horse, but Willow was fairly certain that wild horses didn’t roam the woods of Somerset.

She was completely correct. It was a horse, and it wasn’t wild. It in fact had a woman riding it. The woman was wearing standard riding clothes, as far as Willow could tell. She knew next to nothing about horses. In any case, the woman didn’t look all that pleased to see Willow there.

The horse stopped a few feet in front of her, and the woman dismounted in one smooth movement. Willow wondered if she’d absently wandered into some kind of horse training area or something. Obviously the woman knew what she was doing.

“What are you doing here?” The woman asked. She was English, which wasn’t really a surprise. She sounded posh enough to give Giles or Wesley a run for their money. “This is my property.”

“Is it? Sorry. I was driving past, and I saw the wood and thought I’d go for a walk.” Willow paused. “That sounds weird, doesn’t it? It’s weird. Who just randomly goes for a walk in some woods?”

“You were on the motorway? That’s miles away.”

Willow shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. I kind of… lost track of time, I guess. Sorry.”

The woman relaxed slightly. It occurred to Willow that the woman was about the same age that she was. Even though she seemed to own an entire forest, she still seemed rather uncomfortable to find a stranger in it. This made sense, but didn’t particularly fit in with the self-possessed rich person stereotype that Willow was familiar. She couldn’t ever imagine Cordelia feeling uncomfortable in a situation like this. “You said that already.”

“I know. Sorry.” Willow winced, and the woman smiled briefly. “I’m Willow.”

“Vivian.”

Willow shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. “So, um, this is your wood.”

“It is.”

“It’s, uh, a nice wood.” Willow tried not to wince again. As small talk went, this was painfully awkward.

“Thank you.” Vivian’s face seemed to mirror her own feelings. “So, uh, do you go walking in every forest you find, or is mine special?” 

“Oh, no. I mean, it’s a nice wood, but generally I’m more of a city girl. It’s just that I broke up with… someone, and I’m pretty sure that I'm going to leave my job soon, and I just couldn’t face going back to London. Sorry, I didn’t mean to trespass…”

“It’s not a problem.” Vivian said. “I’m sorry about-“

“Oh, don’t be.” Willow interrupted. “I mean, it’s not the first time we’ve broken up. We’re kind of… incompatible, I guess. We just get thrown together a lot.”

“Okay.” Vivian said, after a moments pause. “And your job…”

Willow smiled for a moment. “You could say that the magic’s gone. Honestly, I should have left a long time ago, but I just sort of… hung on.”

“Right.” Vivian said, clearly a little uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you all of this.” Willow said apologetically. “We just met, I shouldn’t just be…”

“It’s not a problem, honestly.” Vivian said. “You’ve got a lot going on. Sometimes you just need to talk.”

“Yes. Yes, exactly.” Willow agreed. “But, um, if you could point me in the direction of the freeway, I can get out of your hair.”

“Nonsense.” Vivian said, suddenly decisive. “It will be dark soon, and English weather isn’t exactly known for being pleasant. My house is nearby – you can wait there and my driver can take you to London.”

“You don’t have to do that, honestly-“ Willow protested.

“You’re not dressed for a night out in a forest in an English autumn.”

Willow opened her mouth, then closed it again. Vivian had a point. “I don’t have to get on the horse, do I?”

Vivian’s lips twitched slightly. “Not if you don’t want to. It would be faster.”

“Not a fan of horses. They’re too… big. And they have huge teeth.” Willow said. She was fully aware that she had stared down demons which the average person would have found _much_ scarier than a horse, but that didn’t mean that she had to like horses. Besides, whoever said that she had to be rational?

“Fine.” Vivian said. She turned to the horse and said something to it in a language that Willow didn’t recognise, and slapped it on its side. The horse turned and cantered back the way it came. “He can find his own way back. Come on, it’s not far.”

“What language was that?”

“Russian.” Vivian replied. “It’s the result of a misspent youth.”

“Right.” Willow said uncertainly. “I’m sure that lots of delinquents learn Russian and horse-riding.”

“They probably would, if they went to the kind of boarding schools I went to.” Vivian said drily.

“Yeah, most delinquents only manage French and donkey riding.” Willow commented. “Whatever is the education system coming to?”

Vivian shrugged. “Maybe our delinquents are more talented than yours?”

“Oh yeah? You'd be surprised. Yours might be polyglot centaurs, but ours are Olympic level athletes.”

Vivian looked at Willow. “No, you're not.”

“I never said _I_ was a delinquent. I'm the very model of a modern… trespasser. I just work with delinquents.” Willow paused, before adding quietly “Worked.”

“Olympic delinquents.”

“Of course.”

They continued walking in silence for about a minute, before Vivian asked “What exactly is it that you d- uh, did? If you don't mind me asking.”

“What? Oh, I guess that I've been cryptic enough that I can forgive your terribly impertinent question. One must answer occasionally.”

Vivian narrowed her eyes. “Was that supposed to be an English accent?”

Willow nodded proudly. “Yep. Good, huh?”

“Well… no.” Vivian said bluntly. “It sounded more South African. A bad South African at that.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

Willow waved a hand. “We really need to stop apologising to each other.”

Vivian hesitated, before venturing to say “You started it.”

Willow looked at her indignantly. “ _Really?_ You're going there? I mean, I know I'm trespassing on your property and you're being really nice and I'm being kind of… odd, but that's actually a great reason to be snippy, so I think I'm going to stop talking now.”

“No, don't do that. This is the first actual conversation that I've had for…” Vivian trailed off.

“You know…” Willow said, after several seconds passed without Vivian saying anything, “... a reputable source tells me that sometimes it's good to talk about things.”

“I thought we’d already established that I'm not a reputable source.” Vivian said lightly. “Being a delinquent and all that.”

Willow didn't immediately respond. When she did, it was to answer Vivian's earlier question. “I used to… well, technically I still work for a charity. I haven't actually left yet. Anyway, the charity helps teenage girls. Teaches them… skills, you know, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds noble.” Vivian said, carefully not asking why Willow was going to quit.

“Oh, yeah. But it's… depressing and difficult and dark and other things beginning in 'D’. I just don't… I don't think I can do it anymore.”

“Fair enough.” Vivian said. She hoped that Willow would say something else. She didn't want this conversation to end, weird as it was. She didn't talk to people all that often, and Willow had literally walked into her back garden. Vivian didn't often get on with people, didn't often even bother to try, so it came as something of a surprise to find that she was enjoying this conversation. Strange as it was.

But Willow didn't continue. She seemed lost in a reverie, doubtlessly thinking about her job or perhaps her failed relationship. Vivian didn't want to ask more questions - she didn't want to pry - and she couldn't for the life of her think of anything to say. While Vivian was technically capable of holding a conversation in a half-dozen languages, that didn't mean that she was actually any good at conversing in the first place.

Eventually, though, Willow blinked and seemingly came back to the present. “Anyway. Enough about me. I'm guessing that there's more to you than being a Russian-speaking, horse-riding Samaritan. I mean, most of them probably don't own forests. Well, I assume they don't, but you're the first one I've met.”

“Honestly? Not much. My father is… some kind of industrialist. I honestly don't know exactly what he does, only that it makes him ridiculously wealthy and takes a ludicrous amount of his time. Meanwhile I… ride horses, travel and generally idle away doing nothing whatsoever with my life.”

“Uh huh. Sounds…”

“Lonely?” Vivian supplied.

“I was going to say boring. I never was one for idling.” Willow decided not to comment on what Vivian had said. “We're quite the - wow.”

They'd just left the woods, and Willow had seen Vivian’s house. To say that it was big would be a waste of an opportunity to say that it was massive. It looked like a small castle, minus the battlements and the moat.

“Welcome to Chez McArthur.” Vivian said drily. “Home to me and a staff of dozens.”

“Really?”

“Well, no. More like six.”

“And it's just you living there? No wonder you spend most of your time idling - it looks like it would take you about a week just to walk from one side to the other.”

“Oh, half a week at most.” Vivian said modestly.

“Think of the… I mean, you could probably have guided tours.”

“It's not that interesting, historically.”

“You could throw a massive party.” Willow said, fully aware that she had spent far too much time with Faith to even think of a comment like that. “Honestly, I've seen some big places before, Ke-, uh, my ex used to live somewhere pretty massive. But they had whole families in them.” Or, on occasion, oodles of Slayers.

“I have a bunch of horses.” Vivian said, feeling defensive but not entirely sure why.

“I'd suggest a cat, too.” Willow said, still staring at the mansion. “Listen, you need to get out of the house. And I don't mean to ride a horse…” Willow caught Vivian's expression and hastily added “Sorry. I don't mean to give advice. Occupational hazard.”

“No. No, you're right. I should do something.” Vivian searched for something else to say. “Uh, but what about you? You're just about to leave your job. What are you going to do?”

“Apply for an astrophysics degree and get a job in a second hand bookshop.” Willow said instantly.

Vivian smiled. “I get the impression you've been putting some thought into this.”

“Oh yes. I plan. I'm a planner. I've actually found a charity bookshop in the centre of London that'll take me, and I've sent off my university application. Even if your system is a little weird.”

“What is the education system coming to?” Vivian repeated Willow’s earlier comment with a grin. “You're staying in England?”

“Yup.” Willow said cheerfully. “Can't get enough of your food over here.”

“Understandable.”

“So… you? Any plans suddenly spring upon you since I foisted my unwanted advice on you?”

“I don't know. I could be a translator, I guess. I'd still get to travel.”

“Sounds like a good idea. You could always go somewhere with horses.”

“Why don't we meet in a year?” Vivian said impulsively. Then she blushed as she realised what she’d said.

Willow spoke before Vivian could apologise. “No, that's a good idea. We can see how we're getting on. I'll probably be heading off the university then, I can come back here and meet you and bask in the glory of knowing a world famous translator.”

“I wouldn't say world famous…”

“This is the oddest conversation I've ever had with a horsewoman in a forest.”

“Do you have a lot of those?”

“You're my first.” Willow said, with a grin.

“So, a year?” Vivian said. She felt oddly hopeful, and was trying to ignore the sensation that told her that she would still be here in a year, having done precisely nothing, which wouldn't matter because Willow would have entirely forgotten about her.

“A year.” Willow replied, trying to ignore the feeling that even if she did come back here, Vivian wouldn't remember her and she's end up getting turned away by her butler or something. Not that she would come back anyway, because having a conversation with a stranger in a wood was an entirely different thing to meeting up with said stranger a year later.


	2. Chapter Two

As it turned out, it wasn’t a year before the two of them met again. It was, in fact, only three months.

Vivian was in London for an interview. It wasn’t the first that she had been on. She had a distinct feeling that it wouldn’t be the last, either. Of course, she could always ask her father to arrange a job for her – he might even have need an interpreter himself – but she didn’t want to ask him for anything. She’d managed to get through her life having barely even spoken to him, and she didn’t think she was going to start now. She was going to do this by herself. She didn’t have to rely on his influence.

The first time that she had gone to London, she hadn’t _planned_ to go looking for Willow. It just sort of happened. She’d known that the interview hadn't gone well about five minutes into it, and after she had done she had just gone walking. It was a poor substitute for riding, but at least she wasn’t being driven home. She wasn’t just staring out of her window and dwelling on things that she should have done. At least when she was walking there was sense of movement.

After a while, it occurred to her that she knew someone in the centre of London. More or less. Of course, Vivian didn’t actually know what Willow’s surname was, where she worked or indeed anything that would help Vivian find her. But she had nothing but time, and there couldn’t be that many charity book shops in the centre of London.

Actually, there were quite a few, but that didn’t matter. It became something of a ritual – after a bad interview, Vivian went looking for Willow. She only visited one shop per trip, but that was part of the fun.

She never expected to actually _find_ Willow. For one thing, she never asked anyone who worked there if they knew a redheaded American. There was every chance that Willow was in a back room, or wasn’t working that day, or she was out for lunch. For all Vivian knew, she’d already been to the shop that Willow worked in, and had simply missed her. After the first couple of times, it became less about actually finding Willow and more about just looking.

And then, one day, there she was. Vivian was just about to go in, when she saw Willow sitting behind the till, talking to a customer. Vivian quickly moved away from the door and pretended to be thoroughly engrossed in a window display. Even though she stared at it for a good few minutes, Vivian couldn’t possibly have said what kind of books were featured. She was too busy wondering what she was doing there. She barely knew Willow. What kind of person thinks that meeting someone in a forest was sufficient grounds for seeing them again? It wasn’t as though Willow had come to her house, either. Vivian had actively gone looking for her. Anyway, what was she supposed to say?

“We’ve got a language section, if you're interested.” An American voice said from just next to her. “We might even have a couple of books on horses.”

Vivian, to her credit, didn’t jump. She just turned to see Willow standing in the doorway, trying to look serious and not doing a very good job of it.

“Um, hello.” Vivian said, eventually. She couldn’t quite seem to think of anything else to say.

“Hi.” Willow smiled openly. “What brings you to these parts?”

Vivian didn’t really know how to answer that. Saying that she had come looking for Willow would be… eccentric, to say the least. However, after a little while, she managed an astonishingly eloquent response. “Mmm?”

“Maybe you’re looking for shelter from the rain?”

Vivian looked up. It was a nice day, as far as days in an English winter went. “Sure.” Vivian’s lips quirked into a smile. “Let’s go with that.”

Willow stood aside and gestured grandly. “Come inside before you get soaked.”

“Thank you.” Vivian said, once again dazzling herself with the depth of her conversation.

“I- sorry, one moment.” Willow dashed around the counter to deal with a customer with a small stack of history books. Vivian idly looked around and saw a cabinet with more expensive books in it than she would have expected to see. Most charity bookshops she’d been in sold books for about two or three pounds, but none of these were lower than twenty-five.

“I see you’ve found our rare books cabinet.” Willow said, standing next to her again.

“Mmm.”

“Anything take your fancy?”

“Uh…” Vivian shook her head slightly. “Sorry. My conversation skills don’t seem to be up to much today.”

“It’s fine. I talk enough for two.”

“So, um, how have you been?”

Willow made a face. “We got an _enormous_ delivery of cookery books. It’s ridiculous. Downstairs is filled with boxes and boxes of them, and it’s not like they sell. But enough of my cookery-related woes – how are you?”

“I’m alright.” Vivian shrugged. “Finding a job is taking longer than I’d expected. It turns out that interpreting and translating are different things, which led to some confusion and a couple of failed applications.”

Willow smiled. “Well, if you need a hobby while you job hunt, I know a place that’ll sell you as many cookery books as you could possibly need…”

Vivian smiled back. “I could translate them and sell them on at a profit… or is there not a market for that?”

“I don’t know. I never really learned how to cook anything fancy, and if I did I wouldn’t be looking for recipes in Russian.”

“What language would you like? I can do French, Arabic, Mandarin… take your pick.”

“How about Latin?”

“Latin?”

Willow shrugged. “My Latin is a little rusty, but it’s better than my French. I haven’t used that since high school.”

“I’m sure Latin gets used a lot in charity work.” Vivian said, somewhat bemused. “You can, um, come up with mottos and things.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” Willow said, in a tone of voice that suggested that further questions wouldn’t be appreciated. 

“So, um, it’s been good seeing you again.” Vivian said somewhat tentatively after the silence went on for too long. “I’ll leave you to… get on with things.”

Willow nodded. “Yeah.” Then, apparently, she seemed to change her mind. “You sure you don’t want to look around here first? I mean, it’s still raining…”

“No it isn’t.” Vivian said automatically, before remembering that that was her astonishingly flimsy excuse for being there in the first place.

“It isn’t?” Willow looked like the very picture of surprise. “What are you still doing here then?”

“I was in the neighbourhood, for an interview, and, uh, I remembered that you said you were going to work somewhere around here. So I went walking, and I didn’t actually expect to _find_ you. I mean, technically I was looking for you, but I wasn’t actually…” Vivian trailed off. “Do you think we’re destined to meet in odd circumstances?”

“I don’t know. What you're saying makes sense to me. More than imaginary rain, anyway.” Willow smiled faintly. “I’ve always thought that a city isn’t the place for someone aimless. You have to be going _somewhere_ , even if you don’t actually want to get where you’re going. Just moving towards it is the thing.”

Vivian tilted her head. She didn’t know if that was what she had actually said. She didn’t even know if that was what she had been thinking, because she hadn’t really verbalised it even to herself. It was just some kind of nebulous idea… which she supposed was what Willow had just said. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

“It would probably sound weird to anyone else though.”

“It still sounds weird to _me_ , never mind anyone else. I’m surprised it makes sense to anyone.”

Willow spread her hands. “Well, I’m a veteran babbler. I’m not known for being all that coherent.”

“I’m not known for talking about translating cookery books, either.”

They smiled at each other. After a couple of seconds, Vivian said “You know what? I think I will look around a bit.”

Willow’s smile widened. “The foreign language books are over there.”

Vivian wandered over to where Willow had pointed, and Willow dealt with a customer. Vivian, not seeing anything that grabbed her, continued ambling around until she got the mystery and thriller section, where she stopped.

“You don’t strike me as a thriller type.” Willow said, leaning over to counter to see her.

“I’m not. Not really. I mean, I’m not into all these modern ones. They’re too dark. But I like the older ones – you know, Nicholas Blake, Agatha Christie… they’re relaxing. You know that the murderer’s going to get caught, and there’s not all this… noir stuff.”

Willow paused. “Listen. I’m going for lunch now. Do you want to come?”

Vivian didn’t reply immediately. Not because she didn’t know what her response was – she wanted to say yes. She even knew why. Vivian had no one much in her life. She had her horses, her house, her mind… but while she could quite happily live in her own head, it was nice to have someone to talk to. Even if it was about incredibly mundane things, like cookery books. She didn’t talk to people much. She didn’t have anyone much to talk to in the first place.

In short, she was lonely.

She hesitated because she could see Willow’s face, and she could see that her expression almost perfectly mirrored her own feelings. Willow was in a new country, she was in a new job… she might just be in the same place that she was herself. She was trying to hide it, but Willow looked as though she was uncertain and nervous, as though she might be lonely, too.

“Where are we going?”

Willow grinned. “It’s a mystery. But I promise that it’s a nice one.”

~*~

The mystery turned out to be a small Korean restaurant. Vivian sat down opposite Willow and wondered what happened next.

Willow looked at her expectantly. “Well?”

“That’s a deep subject.”

“What?”

“You said well... you know, those things you get water out of? They’re deep…” Vivian trailed off awkwardly.

“That’s good. I’m going to steal that, I think.” Willow said. “But I thought you’d order in Korean or something.”

“I never learnt Korean.”

“Ah well. I guess they left that out of your delinquent school.”

“You’d be surprised at the kind of things they left off the curriculum.” Vivian said, fiddling with napkin. She realised what she was doing and made a concerted effort to keep her hands still.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how many languages _do_ you speak?”

“Fiv- six? Six.” Vivian looked up and squinted. “Six. You?”

“One. One and a bit, if you count high school French and a few Latin phrases.”

Vivian shrugged. “I travelled a lot when I was growing up. My father put me in more schools than I can count… it was just easier to pick up the language of wherever I was.”

“I used to travel a lot. For work, you know. We went… we went everywhere.”

“Tiring, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah. All the planes, the cars, checking in, checking out…”

“Do you know, living in Somerset is the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place? I’ve only been there for two years.”

“Ouch.”

“But, I mean, you must be alright with travelling. You do live on another continent than the one you grew up on.” Vivian paused. “I assume you grew up in America.”

“Yep. Small town California, born and raised.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“Oh, starting fresh, things like that.” Willow decided not to mention that her hometown had collapsed into a giant sinkhole.

“I’d drink to that, but we haven’t actually ordered anything yet.”

“We should probably get on that.”


	3. Chapter Three

Vivian needn’t have worried about only meeting Willow under odd circumstances. Over the next few weeks, she met Willow several times. They would go for lunch – sometimes to the Korean place, sometimes somewhere else. They would talk about nothing in particular, and they would laugh.

Even so, there were things that they didn’t talk about. Willow didn’t give any particular details about her old job, and Vivian didn’t really talk about her father or her home life. As such, they got some glimpses into each-other’s lives, snapshots gathered through anecdotes, but neither of them formed a complete picture. But that was fine, because that wasn’t why they met. They met precisely for the mundanity and off-the-wall strangeness of their meandering conversations. They just wanted to talk. Willow couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to something about anything that didn’t have something to do with demons or magic, and Vivian couldn’t remember the last time that she had spoken to anyone about anything at all.

That is, until one day.

It started innocuously enough.

“Can I ask you a question?” Vivian asked.

Willow, who at that moment had a mouthful of pasta, merely nodded.

“What do you do when you’re not at the shop? I mean, I’ve been there a couple of times and you haven’t been there. What do you do?”

Willow shrugged and swallowed. “I’m working on my Latin, brushing up on my astrophysics knowledge. I’m going to start a French course soonish. I’ve been meaning to go and do touristy things, but it always seems to be raining or just horrible weather. Why?”

“Only, I know that you're working for Oxfam and I’m pretty sure that they don’t pay… at all, and I’ve noticed that you always buy food that’s six pounds or less.” Vivian flushed slightly. “Um, ‘cause you know that I could pay, you know, if you…”

Willow smiled faintly. “That’s sweet, but you don’t need to. I guess you could say that I'm independently wealthy. Not enough to buy an enormous mansion in the countryside, but I can cover my own expenses.” She gestured at her plate. “Besides, the shop covers my expenses, as long as it’s less than six dolla- uh, pounds. I'm not out of pocket or anything. My parents always taught me to be thrifty.”

“What are they like?” Vivian said. She hadn’t intended to. She hadn’t planned on saying anything, the words had just come out. If she had analysed her feelings, she might have come to the conclusion that the longest conversation that she had ever had with her father was about 10 minutes, and her mother had died when she was very young. She didn’t really know what it was like to have parents who were actually present.

But as it was, she just looked embarrassed. She opened her mouth to tell Willow that she didn’t have to answer that, but Willow was already speaking. “They are… distant. You know when you see absent-minded professors on TV, and you think that people can't really be like that in real life? Well… they were. My dad always used to forget his keys, and I used to let him in – they both forgot to eat half the time, too. My dazzling cooking skills are thanks to me having to feed them.” Willow looked up. “What about yours?”

“I don’t know.” Vivian shrugged awkwardly. “I think I’ve only spent a few hours, total, with my father. I don’t really remember my mother much. So I think I beat you on the distant parent’s front.”

“It’s not a competition. Anyway, it’s not important. We both turned out fine.” Willow twirled her fork absently between her fingers. “You speak six languages, and I’m… going to back to school?” Her voice made it a question, which she hadn't intended it to be.

“Yeah, right. We’re the height of accomplishment, sitting in an Italian restaurant.”

“Exactly.”

“Speaking of the height of accomplishment…” Vivian said significantly. “I’ve got a job.”

Willow nodded. “Congratulations.”

Vivian narrowed her eyes. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“Why would I be surprised? You’re obviously good with languages, and with the kind of education you’ve had anywhere would be lucky to have you. The only thing I'm surprised about is that no one’s hired you before.”

Vivian tried not to grin, and didn’t really succeed. “Thank you.”

“Why? It’s true.”

“Just…” Vivian waved a hand absently in lieu of saying something that she didn’t really have the words for. “Anyway. What would you say if I told you that I’m leaving for France in a week?”

Willow shrugged. “I’d congratulate you. I’d tell you that we should keep in touch, give you my phone number and my email address. Then, after a while, you’ll be busy, and I’ll be busy, and you’ll be in a different country with a different time zone and we’ll end up not talking nearly as much as we planned… I’m sorry, that’s not the answer that you were looking for, was it?”

“Well… no.” Vivian paused. “That got a lot more… specific than I was looking for.”

“I used to travel a lot for work, and my friends were doing the same job… we all promised to keep in touch but we never quite got around to it.” Willow winced. “Sorry. I’ve kind of put a damper on your news, haven’t I?”

“No. I did ask… and I’ve got another question.”

“Really?” Willow smiled despite herself. “You're just full of questions today, aren’t you?”

“Guess so.” Vivian smiled back. “Anyway, I was wondering… I was going to ask, uh, I was going to say… I was wondering if you want to come with me?”

Willow froze with her fork half way to her mouth.

Vivian didn’t wait for her to give a response. “I mean, the job’s for a week. And I know that you’re busy with the shop, but there are loads of volunteers now that the holidays are over, and the manager can get by without you. And you said that you were going to try French again, and… is it weird that I'm asking you?”

“I think it’s my turn to ask a question… sorry if I’m a bit blunt.” Willow paused to marshal her thoughts. “You’re lonely, aren’t you?”

Vivian thought about denying it, but really didn’t see the point. “Yes. Astonishingly so.”

“Okay. Second question. When this job ends, do you want to work at the shop? I know it’s about as far from a glamourous interpreting job as you can get, but there are people there and you won't be all alone in your massive house.”

“Yes.” Vivian hesitated a moment before continuing. “You’re _doing_ stuff. You’ve got all these plans, and you're sticking with them. I don’t have… I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. So yes, I would like to work with you.”

“Good.” Willow smiled widely. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way – yes, I’d love to go to France with you. Where are we going?”

“It’s a mystery. But I promise that it’s a nice one.”

~*~

They mystery turned out to be Toulon, a city in the French Riviera. It was apparently a few degrees warmer than London was at that time of year. Apparently Vivian’s father owned a property there, and they could stay there. Vivian told Willow this, and many other historical titbits, on the flight over.

The flight was about two hours.

As the pair for were buckling their seat belts, preparing for touch down, Willow said “You don’t really have a job here, do you?”

“No.” Vivian said, after a brief pause.

“Okay.”

And that was all that there was to be said about that.

~*~

During the week, the pair wandered through the old town, took the cable car to the top of Mount Faron and generally did all the touristy things that they could think of. Several times Willow tried to speak French, only for Vivian to step in and speak in a flawless accent that made Willow wish she’d kept going with French after high school. Willow wanted to go to the opera, but Vivian was against that – watching people belt out arias wasn’t really her thing, and besides, if she really wanted to she could have gone to Royal Opera House in London.

They were also, one evening at dinner, interrupted by someone who came over to their table and said “Vivian?”

Vivian looked up at the new comer. She was a woman, seemingly of the same age that Vivian was herself. She had a distinct French accent, and she obviously seemed to know Vivian. Vivian couldn’t quite remember who she was. The woman, apparently realising this, gestured to herself and said “Béatrice. We went to school together for a year. Remember?”

Willow was looking at Vivian while Béatrice spoke. Her posture changed slightly. Willow would have said that Vivian sat up straighter, but Vivian’s posture was immaculate. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that there was a certain stiffness to the way she sat that hadn't been there a moment before. The faint smile that been hovering around her lips for most of the evening faded away as though it had never been there, and Vivian’s brows furrowed slightly. “Oh, yes. I remember.” Her voice was flat, and even more English than usual, if such a thing was possible. She didn’t say anything else.

Béatrice seemed somewhat discomfited by this. “’ow are you?”

“I’m good. Thank you.” Vivian made no attempt to return the pleasantry.

“It is good to see you, but I must be going.” Béatrice left and took the arm of a man – presumably her husband. The pair walked away, although Willow noticed that the man looked back. Vivian didn’t seem to have even noticed that Béatrice was gone.

“What was that?” Willow said.

Vivian looked mildly surprised. “What?”

“She was just trying to be nice. You didn’t have to be so… _cold_.”

“I honestly don’t remember who she is. I did spend a year in Paris when I was… fourteen? But I don’t remember her at all. What was I supposed to say?”

“Well, telling her that you don’t remember her would have been better than being like that. I know its winter, but I’m pretty sure you just dropped the temperature by a few degrees all by yourself.”

“Look, Willow, I’ve travelled a lot. I’ve spent a few months here, a few months there – I can't remember everyone. I don’t remember her. What was I supposed to do? Just nod politely and frantically try to remember her? About the only thing I remember about Paris was getting left in the Louvre on a school trip one time. One of the girls – not Béatrice – told the teacher that I was with them. I must have wandered around for hours before I finally went back to the school. Everyone laughed.” Vivian looked at Willow. “I don’t get on with people. I can't just strike up a conversation with someone in the middle of a wood like you can.”

“Me? We’re making this about me, now? There’s… most of my friends are on different continents. They’re so busy that months can go by before I even get an email from one of them.” Willow exhaled noisily. “There’s a big difference between being friendly and having friends. I used to be mind-boggling shy. Eventually I realised that, if I talk at people long enough, they might find it endearing. But I don’t have many friends, not really. If I met someone from high school, I’d at least ask them how they were.” Not least because Sunnydale was buried in a giant sink hole, and wasn’t likely to have any school reunions. “You talk about being lonely, but I’m at least as lonely as you. The difference is that my friends are around, just… unavailable. You just shut people out.”

“Thank you for that.” Vivian said coldly. “I’m sure your armchair psychology worked just fine on all of those girls you’ve helped, but I’m not a teenager. I don’t have to reminisce about school with someone I don’t even remember.”

“You don’t. You also don’t have to ask someone you’ve met a handful of times to go on holiday with you, but you’ve done that, haven’t you?” Willow stood. “I’m full. I’m sure you can cover the bill.”

Vivian watched her go, a thousand witty ripostes and more than few apologies dying unsaid on her tongue.


	4. Chapter Four

Vivian didn’t go straight home. She paid for their meal, but even after that she didn’t go straight home. She didn’t want to see Willow. Vivian hadn’t had a fight with anyone since she’d been in university, and she didn’t really want to get in one now. She didn’t have a clue what she would say to Willow if she saw her, and she didn’t want to fall out with her. She didn’t have enough friends that she could afford to do that. The fact that they were staying in Vivian’s house in another country didn’t help matters, of course.

So Vivian wandered the city, hoping that by the time she did go home Willow would be asleep, and maybe, possibly, in the morning they might be able to skate over the incident as though it hadn't happened.

When Vivian finally did go home, she didn’t turn the hall light on. She didn’t need to – not because the light from outside was enough for her to get by, or because she was tired, but rather because she didn’t see Willow’s shoes. Willow always left her shoes in the hallway. The first time that Vivian had asked about that, Willow had said that it was because she didn’t want to scuff her floors, but when Vivian had told her not to worry about it Willow had nodded, smiled, and then done the exact same thing later that day. Then she’d said that it was a habit that her parents had instilled in her, and Vivian had left it at that.

Her shoes weren’t in the hall way, which meant that Willow hadn’t come home. It was perfectly possible that Willow had had the same thought that Vivian had – she certainly hoped so. Maybe Willow would come home any minute, expecting Vivian to be asleep.

So Vivian got ready to for bed, but she didn’t actually get into bed. She didn’t even think about getting into bed. Instead she sat in a chair by the window, and watched the waves, and the boats bobbing up and down. She sat there staring at them until she couldn’t really tell which was which. She wasn’t waiting for Willow, she told herself. She just couldn’t get to sleep.

Eventually, though, Vivian did fall asleep. She must have done, because she the sun was shining in her face, and it was well above the horizon. The sun must have risen hours ago, and she’d completely missed it.

She padded, barefoot, to the top of the stairs. Looking down, she saw a distinct lack of shoes. Willow must have come in while Vivian was asleep, and left again early that morning.

Except, maybe she hadn’t. There was a note on the hall table, one which must have been there last evening. She surely would have seen it, if she had bothered to turn on the light.

It was a simple enough message. It just said ‘Gone back home’.

The larger part of Vivian’s mind wondered how Willow had managed that – as far as she was aware, there weren’t any late night flights for London. Even if they were, it didn’t seem all that likely that Willow could have gotten on one in such short notice. But, when Vivian went poked her head into Willow’s room and saw that all of her things were gone, she supposed that she must have.

Despite this, a small part which Vivian was trying to ignore was thinking that she had thought of this house, which she’d only seen a few days ago and hadn’t even lived in for a week, the house that she’d lived with Willow in for a few short days, she’d thought of that house as home.

In any case, Vivian didn’t go to the airport to get on a different flight. She still had a day here before the flight she had originally booked left. She wasn’t going to leave just because Willow had. She loved travelling.

So had decided to go down to the port, because she liked boats and thought that maybe she would go on an outing – Willow her previous suggestions, claiming seasickness – when she saw Béatrice. She was on the other side of the street, closer to the houses than to the water. She didn’t seem to have seen Vivian, and the man she’d been with yesterday wasn’t with her.

Vivian thought about letting Béatrice carry on walking. She hadn't noticed Vivian, and Vivian didn’t really know what to say to her in any case.

But she should say _something_. Even Vivian had yet to remember anything about Béatrice, that didn’t mean that she should ignore her. She should at least try to speak to her. Probably. According to Willow.

Before she had time to second guess herself, she had crossed the street. “Béatrice! Hello. I’m sorry about yesterday.” Vivian said in French. “I’m afraid that I don’t actually remember who you are, and I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t mean to be so… cold.”

Béatrice looked at her for a long moment. “Your French is much better than I remember.”

Vivian shrugged. “I’ve had more practice since school.”

Béatrice waved a hand as though to dismiss the apology. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember me. I was the shy girl at the back of the class. Not someone that the glamourous foreigner notice.”

Vivian’s eyes widened in surprise. “What?” She exclaimed in English.

Béatrice looked amused. “You were the new girl with the rich father, the one who had travelled everywhere and had a bodyguard. You are the kind of person that people remember. Or didn’t you realise that that was why you used to get teased?”

Vivian shook her head mutely, not trusting herself to say anything coherent in any language. This was news to her.

“Most of them are married to politicians, or they’re running their parents’ businesses.” Béatrice shrugged. “I suppose that you’re in your father’s business, too.”

Vivian shook her head and, before she was aware of what she was saying, she said “I work in a bookshop.” Upon seeing the surprise on Béatrice’s face and realising what she had said, Vivian added “And you?”

Béatrice gestured at the port. “I own most of the boats here.” She looked intently at Vivian. “I guess you could say I work for your father, in a way. Sometimes he pays me to import things.”

Vivian nodded, as though she understood. She had never really known what her father did. She knew he was something in oil, but she didn’t know why that meant that he had to travel so much or why he had to import things into France by boat. Possibly Béatrice realised that Vivian didn’t know what she was nodding about, because she said “Do we kiss each other?”

Vivian blushed furiously, before she realised that kissing on the cheek was something that acquaintances did in France, and that that question wasn’t uncommon. She offered her hand, and Béatrice shook it. “Next time you're in Toulon, I’d be happy to take you out on the water.”

“Maybe next time.”

~*~

When Vivian got back to England, she didn’t immediately go to the shop where Willow worked. She had planned to go when she was next in London, but no one was asking her to come in for interviews, and there wasn’t really any other reason for her to be in the capital. Plus, she wasn’t really sure what to say to Willow. By that point Vivian had probably left it a little bit too long, and things would be awkward. Of course, they might very well have been awkward in any case.

So Vivian went riding a lot, even though the weather wasn’t great. She tweaked her CV a few dozen times. But, after a while, she realised that she just didn’t want to slip back into how she had been before she had met Willow. She didn’t want to just lurk in her house in Somerset. She wanted to do something. She thought about travelling, which was her normal standby when she felt like this, but she was fully aware that the only reason she was considering that was because she was wary about seeing Willow. Besides, Willow had asked her if she wanted to work in the shop with her, and (assuming, of course, that Willow still wanted her to) moving to London would save her time on travelling. She was fairly certain that her father still owned the house that she had lived in while she was studying at LSE, and that was maybe ten minutes’ walk from where Willow worked. It was a sensible plan, and definitely wasn’t solely so that Vivian could justify going to see Willow.

Sometime Vivian was standing outside the bookshop. Willow wasn’t behind the till, which was something. She both wanted and didn’t want to see Willow. Vivian took a deep breath and walked in.

She could hear Willow. She wasn’t sure where she was – behind a corner, probably, out of sight of the entrance. It sounded like she was talking to a customer. Vivian walked to the till and asked for a volunteer application form and a pen. Willow was still talking – she hadn’t heard Vivian.

Vivian briefly thought about returning the pen, taking the application and taking it somewhere else to fill out, but she had come that far and she wasn’t going to cop out now. There was an armchair in the middle of the room, probably so people could have somewhere to sit while they browsed the fiction shelves. Vivian sat down, and started filling out the form.

She would have liked to have said that she didn’t notice when Willow stopped talking, but that wasn’t true. The shop was quiet – there were only a few people there at that time of day – and Willow’s American accent stood out. Vivian, however, didn’t look up.

She didn’t look up when she heard someone moving in front of her, either.

She _did_ look up when Willow asked “What are you doing here?”

Willow was sitting on a stool in front of her. She was leaning back against a shelf, and her arms were crossed. Despite the fact that Vivian was several inches taller than Willow, Willow was still managing to look down her nose at her. Although her back was flat against the shelf, Willow had somehow contrived to look as though she was turned away from Vivian. Normally, there was a slight smile playing around her lips, as though she was mildly amused by everything, but there was no sign of that. For the first time since Vivian had met her, Willow looked like she didn’t want her there, and that was such an alien feeling that it stood before them like a brick wall. Vivian hadn’t planned on what she was going to say – she hadn't felt capable of that – but she’d thought that she would say something incoherent and nearly incomprehensible, and Willow would nod and she would understand. It had worked before, worked for both of them, but it seemed like the distance between them was just too great and the words weren’t coming.

Willow just sat there, looking at her, waiting for her to speak first.

“Is that what I looked like?” Vivian said. It was the only thing in her head. Everything else had been forced out. “Did I- do I really look like that?”

“Yes.” Willow said flatly.

“Right.” Vivian looked down at the application, at the pen that she had been twirling between her fingers without even realising. “Sorry?” She hadn’t meant for it to sound like a question.

“Okay.”

Vivian looked up again. Willow’s expression hadn't changed. “Is there something else I can say? I didn’t…” She sighed. “Oh well.” She stood. “Sorry. Honestly.”

Willow leaned forward, put her head in her hands. She looked tired, and although Vivian was fairly sure that Willow was roughly the same age as she was, she suddenly looked a lot older than that. “I’m sorry too. For leaving.”

Vivian sat down again. “You don’t need to apologise for that.”

“I know.” Willow said, and Vivian couldn’t tell whether she actually believed that or not. “You don’t have to, either. It was just a little thing. It shouldn’t...”

Vivian waited for a few seconds to see if Willow was going to continue. When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to, Vivian said “I think we went too fast. I shouldn’t have whisked you off to France for a week. I mean, the only reason that I know what your surname is at all is because I saw it on your passport. I shouldn’t… push things.”

“You're not the only one.” Willow sighed. “I know that this is a charity bookshop, here, and that working here helps people, but it’s not the same as being on the front lines. It’s a lot more… hellish. Which is kind of why I left. But my friends are still there, fighting the good fight, and they’re so busy that I hardly see them. And then there’s you, and I can ramble about ridiculous things with you, and that’s great. It’s… light, and fluffy, and everything that I need right now. So I kind of overreacted when I found out that… uh, you’re a person too, with your own… sorry. I don’t want to start in on the armchair psychology again.”

“I guess I could say the same thing.” Vivian replied. “When I first went looking for you, I, uh… you were kind of a goal. So I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life. You weren’t supposed to… criticise me, I guess.”

Willow smiled crookedly. “I guess we both have things to apologise for.”

Vivian returned the smile. “We seem to spend all of our time apologising to each other.”

“Listen. Fill out your form. Maybe once you start working here, we’ll get to know each other better, and we won’t have to keep apologising all the time.”


	5. Chapter Five

Strictly speaking, Willow shouldn’t have looked at Vivian’s application. She wasn’t the shop manager. She should have just put it in a folder behind the till. Well, really, the person who was actually working at the till should have done that, but they were fairly new and probably didn’t really know where the folder was, so Willow did it herself.

She hadn’t _meant_ to look at the application, but she couldn’t stop herself from catching just a glimpse. Willow looked up at Vivian. “Your last name is Volkoff?”

Vivian shrugged. “Technically it should be Volkova, but yes.”

“I thought it was McArthur. I’m sure that’s what you said.”

“McArthur was my mother’s name. I tend to use it more than Volkoff, because my father and I are… not exactly close. And also he spelt it wrong. It should really be transliterated as Volkov, but what can you do?”

“So you're actually Russian?” Willow frowned. While that would explain why Vivian spoke Russian to her horses, it wouldn’t really explain her incredibly British accent, or the fact that she lived in a house in Somerset rather than somewhere in the Russian countryside. She’d said that living in Somerset was the longest that she’d lived anywhere, and Vivian had said that she’d gone to university in London.

“Half. I have dual citizenship.”

Willow narrowed her eyes. “Really?”

“Yes. Why? Don’t I look Russian enough for you?” Vivian added something, presumably in Russian. Her accent was flawless, as far as Willow’s inexpert ear could tell.

“No, it’s more that you don’t sound Russian. Except when you're talking Russian, I mean. And you live in a house in the English countryside-“

“I always have trouble speaking in a different accent than the language I’m speaking. I mean, my French sounds really Parisian, because that’s where I learnt it, but if I try speaking English with a French accent then it will sound… horrible. I learnt English here, in England, I think. When I was young. Which is why I sound so English.”

“Okay.” Willow nodded and let the matter drop. She was vaguely discomfited by it, although she would have been hard-pressed to explain why. If she _had_ been pressed, however, she might have said that it was because she knew Vivian so little that she hadn’t even known where she was from. They’d met each other countless times, Vivian knew that Willow was from small town California, but only now was Willow finding out about Vivian.

~*~

It was a couple of days before the manager asked Vivian to come in for an interview. It didn’t take very long, and it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as Vivian had expected it to be. He had mainly told her what working in a bookshop entailed. He’d asked her very few questions. Vivian wondered if Willow had vouched for her, or it was because this was a volunteer position.

It was another few days before she actually arrived for her first day. She filled out the health and safety form, she was shown around (although by this point she was rather familiar with the layout of the shop itself) and she was introduced to the chaos of the storeroom downstairs. There were piles of books teetering precariously on shelves, and boxes took up a large percentage of the floor space. The manager introduced her to the system that they used for pricing the books, which seemed rather complicated – it was based on the books’ online prices and some arcane ranking system. Still, she’d studied economics, and this surely couldn’t be more complicated than that.

As a way of getting to know each other, it was fairly successful. They spent a lot of time together, so it was inevitable that they learned _something_ about each other. Willow, for example, was afraid of frogs as well as horses, and lived in Wimbledon. Vivian had learned how to shoot when she was very young, and couldn’t understand why Willow lived in Wimbledon when that meant that she had to commute for an hour each way to get to work. Willow didn’t explain that the Wombles of Wimbledon Common had been based on something much nastier, and the property was a holdover from days that they had still been around.

They rarely got to go out for lunch, however, because that would leave the shop short-staffed. Instead, at the end of every day, Vivian would walk Willow to the station – a five minute walk to the nearest one when the weather was poor, and a twenty minute walk to a further one if it wasn’t.

One day towards the end of March, when the weather was good, Vivian looked up at the sky, grinned, and said “Let’s go across the river. There’s something I want to show you.”

Willow looked at her quizzically. “What is it?”

“A mystery. But I promise it’s a nice one.”

“You’re not going to take me to… a yacht or something, are you?”

“I don’t think I’d be even be able to get a yacht this far up the Thames.” Vivian said, her voice thoughtful. “I could always try, if you’re into that.” Willow looked at her in surprise, and Vivian laughed. “I’m joking!”

“So you’re not whisking me away to some distant land, then.”

“Nope. Just across the river. I promise.” 

Willow quickly realised where they were going. It was rather hard not to.

The London Eye was difficult to miss.

“Really?” Willow said, looking up.

“Really. I remember you saying that you wanted to do all the typical tourist things, and what’s more typical than the London Eye? Plus it’s sunset, more or less, on a nice day – it’s the perfect time. Come on, let’s get some tickets.” Vivian paused. “Unless you're scared of heights or something.”

“Hmm?” Willow stopped looking up. “Oh, no. I’d love to go up.”

Vivian grinned at her. “Let’s go then.”

“You haven’t done something extravagant, like booking a whole… bubble thing, have you?”

“Capsule? No. We’re going to do what normal tourists do, and queue for tickets. We’ll have to share our capsule with… German tourists, probably, and we’ll have to push our way to the window so we can see. You have to have the whole experience.”

Vivian was true to her word. They queued, which took rather longer than she had expected. They did indeed share their capsule, although the tourists were Japanese, and they did have to push their way to the window.

Willow stood looking out at the fading sun shimmering on windows and on rooves. She saw all the people bustling about beneath her, and the city stretched out in front of her. Around her, the tourists were talking excitedly in Japanese, and Vivian was standing behind her. Out there was everyone she knew from the book shop, all the regular customers. There were probably some Slayers, too, and vampires were coming out now that the sun was almost down. Not that any of that mattered to Willow, not when she was on top of the world. She floated above the city, above the vampires and the Slayers and work and all of that. There was just the city in front of her, and the dim background noise of Japanese, and Vivian standing behind her.

On the way back down, Willow thought about her parents. They were probably in LA, unless they were at a conference or a symposium or something like that. She couldn’t remember if they had ever decided to just take her somewhere. With them, it had always been a planned thing. She was fairly certain that they were incapable of spontaneity. Xander and Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies were almost always busy these days. On the rare occasions that they weren’t, they might go the mall or see a movie or something that like, but there was always an edge of defiance about it, as though it was a moment snatched from the jaws of whatever evil was around at the time. Certainly, with Kennedy, the only reason that they had ever been together in the first place was because of whatever new Big Bad had reared its ugly head – they came together in crises, in emergencies, and then realised that once again that they had nothing in common and that they didn’t really work.

In short, as she headed back down, she thought that there hadn’t been anyone, really, who would take her for a ride on a giant Ferris wheel for no reason at all.

When they got out and moved away, Willow hugged Vivian, even though she wasn’t really the kind of person who was much given to displays of affection like that. Neither, apparently, was Vivian, if the way she stiffened slightly and flapped her arms awkwardly as though she didn’t really know what to do with them was any indication.

“Thank you.” Willow said, breaking away.

Vivian looked rather embarrassed, and waved her hands as though she was waving away the thanks. “It, uh, don’t worry about it.”

The sun had set by that point, and Willow realised that not only was she hungry, but that she didn’t really want to travel for at least an hour before she could even begin to prepare something to eat. “Hey, um, do you want to get something to eat? I mean, there’s probably millions of places around here… well, not millions of places, but… yeah.”

Vivian smiled. “Yes. Sounds like a good idea.”

~*~

So they went and had dinner. Vivian talked about the first time that she had been on the London Eye – it had been in her first year at university, when she had mistakenly thought that staying in student accommodation was a good idea. One day, she’d had an assignment due and the noise had just been too much – someone always seemed to be blaring music non-stop. She could have gone to the library, or even to a café, but for some reason she couldn’t now recall, she had thought that the London Eye was the perfect place to get some work done. It hadn’t worked out so well – even though it had been a rainy day, she had stared out of the window anyway, and then spent the entire night working on the assignment.

Willow, in turn, told Vivian a little about her own university experience – specifically, the fact that she hadn’t been able finish it, because the university had collapsed into a giant sinkhole, along with the rest of her town.

Vivian, who felt somewhat sheepish having volunteered her own paltry story when Willow had been through something like that, sat in silence for a moment before Willow changed the subject. They talked a lot, about nothing much. They laughed a lot, and afterwards they decided that for a change Willow would walk Vivian home.

They were half way there, with Willow in the middle of a complicated anecdote that she was trying to keep demons out of, when someone wolf-whistled. Several people. Four people, to be exact – four men who, judging by the way that they were leaning on each other for support, were more than a little drunk. Four drunk men who were heading towards them

“Hey! I like the way you walk. Why don’t you two… walk on over here, hmm?” One of them suggestively.

The pair crossed the road. “Hey! You? Where you going? Come over here, sweetheart. We’ll show you some… good times, eh? Come on.” A couple of the men also crossed the road, heading right for them. “Come on. It’ll be fun.” One of them made a grab for Vivian, who swayed easily aside. “You little-“

Then the wind started. Although there had been a light breeze, it hadn’t been anything worth noticing. It had barely shifted the leaves that were beginning to grow. Then, suddenly, there was the wind, which was almost like a solid wall. It was all that Vivian could do to keep her footing, and the men, who were somewhat unsteady in the first place, didn’t manage that. They collapsed, sprawling on the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Vivian turned to Willow, the wind snatching her breath away. She saw Willow with her hair whipping into her face, her eyes wide. Vivian had to look away – she couldn’t breathe, not with the wind driving right into her face like that.

After a few moments, the wind died down slightly – enough that Vivian felt like she could move without being blown away. So she did, with Willow by her side. Clouds appeared above them, seemingly from nowhere, and moments later fat drops of rain began falling. Within seconds they were soaked, puddles covering the pavement and water running down the road. The wind was wild now, seemingly coming from everywhere, blowing the rain directly into their faces so that they could barely see. But they weren’t far from Vivian’s house, even though, by the time they arrived, they looked like they had swum there.

“Do you want to come in?” Vivian said, loudly so that she could be heard over the wind and the rain. As if on cue, lightning lit up the sky and thunder roared. “Get dry, grab a coat and an umbrella, call a taxi…”

“What? Uh, no. I don’t think… no.” Willow’s eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. Vivian wondered if she was scared of storms or something. She certainly seemed nervous. “No, I should go.”

And she did, vanishing into the storm before Vivian even had a chance to say anything.


	6. Chapter Six

Willow didn’t come into work the day after that. To be fair, it would have been very difficult for her – the rain had continued on through the night, and plenty of places were flooded. Getting from Wimbledon to the centre of London would have been almost impossible. But Vivian had expected to see her there, to ask her if she was okay.

By the time Vivian left her house, the rain had become little more than a light drizzle. This was probably because it was simply impossible for more rain to come down – it felt as though the entire contents of the Thames had been pouring down through the night. She thought about calling a taxi, but she lived to close that she just couldn’t justify it. Besides, she’d lived in places that had monsoons. This was nothing.

However, Vivian had reckoned without the cars. By the time she made it to the shop, cars had thoroughly soaked her by driving through puddles. Having an umbrella had helped a little bit, but not nearly enough. She was fairly certain that some of the drivers had even done it on purpose.

But she made it, and even though Willow wasn’t there, or many customers – most of them were put off by the bad weather – she managed to get through the day.

Willow did call the shop, a couple of hours before it closed. The manager answered, and later told Vivian that Willow wouldn’t be in for the next few days, because she wasn’t feeling very well.

What Vivian would _like_ to do would be to call Willow. However, for reasons that didn’t really make a lot of sense, they’d never actually exchanged numbers. When Vivian had lived in Somerset, there hadn’t been any need because the only time they talked was when Vivian had turned up at the shop. Then, when she was working at the shop herself, there _still_ hadn't been any need, because they saw each other more or less every day.

So calling her was out. All she could do was wait.

At the very least, the weather had cleared up. Given that it was late March, the weather was positively hot. It seemed as though, having rained down the contents of a large river, the sun was determined to evaporate it all again. The weathermen were apparently baffled, but that wasn’t particularly new.

She also didn’t have to wait very long, because Willow came in the following day. She was about two hours late, but given that she wasn’t supposed to be in at all that wasn’t much of a problem. She didn’t look ill – admittedly, she _did_ look pale, but only slightly more than usual. She said that she was feeling much better, it must have been some kind of twenty-four hour bug, no, honestly, she was fine. 

She certainly seemed to be. Vivian, however, was fairly certain that she wasn’t.

For one thing, she didn’t move much. Or, possibly, that was inaccurate way of putting it. She seemed to move exactly as much as was required, so more, no less. She didn’t hurry to do anything, and neither did she dawdle. Given that Willow was normally bustling around doing _something_ it was quite a change. But more than that, when there was nothing that needed doing, she did nothing. There was no air of relaxation, not even of quiet contemplation. She just stopped. It was as though there was a great lake of stillness inside her, which spilled out into everything that she did. Moving seemed alien to her, as though she should really be perfectly still. Still in the way that statues are still.

Vivian didn’t mention any of this. She thought that it must be her imagination getting the better of her. She was being poetic, trying to find an abstract reason for something that could be put down to recovering from a bug.

Then, towards the end of the day, Willow suddenly said “Do you ever get the feeling that you’re making your own life, getting out of a rut, and then it turns out that you’re not. That you might think that you’ve been fighting the current but it turns out that you’ve been following the current all along?”

Willow was sitting on the floor sorting out geography books, which to Vivian’s mind was enough to make anyone question their life choices. She wheeled her chair around so that she could see Willow. She looked tired. She was leaning back against a shelf, and Vivian strongly suspected that the shelf was the only reason that Willow wasn’t flat on the floor. She looked not only like she had no energy left, but that she had continued even though she had no energy and as a result had drained some reservoir inside her that shouldn’t be touched. Vivian also wondered why it was that all of this poetic imagery was popping into her head.

“What do you mean?”

Willow didn’t answer immediately. Eventually, she managed to say “The other day, with those… men. You wouldn’t believe how often I had to deal with... stuff like that in my old job. Not the harassment, I mean – well, that too, work with teenage girls and you’re definitely going to hear about comments like that – but, I mean, the whole threatening thing. I thought that I'd left that behind, but then it pops up again here and suddenly I'm right back there, and everything is exactly the same. The same reactions, everything.”

Willow didn’t talk about her old job. She talked about the people who had been there, but she never talked about what she had actually done. All Vivian knew was that it was time-consuming, and had a tendency towards being rather grim.

“I could have dealt with them, you know.” Vivian said lightly. “I do have a black belt.”

Willow didn’t give any indication that she had heard her. “I thought that I’d made my own life, but I haven’t. It’s just a… veneer. Everything is still there, below. From beneath me, it devours.”

“Pfft. If anyone should be complaining about not having made their own life, it should be me. I mean, I copied yours. The only reason I'm here is because of you. Even if you didn’t like your old job, you still did stuff. I’ve done absolutely nothing whatsoever with my life.” Vivian had _meant_ for that to be light, but it hadn't come across that way. It had started off cheerfully, but a bitter note had quickly entered it. When Vivian finished, she looked down at her hands awkwardly.

“Look at us. We’re such a mess.” Willow said drily. “Or possibly such messes.”

“I don’t know why _you’re_ a mess. Getting freaked out by lecherous drunks is perfectly normal.”

“It’s about… control. I was never very good at control. I always did the easy thing. I thought… but yesterday I slipped right back.”

“Control starts with the little things. It’s why I like horse-riding. I might not have the faintest idea about what’s going on in my life, but once I get on the horse I know exactly what comes next, what I need to do, where to go. Everything makes sense.”

“Ah, yes. I remember that. Control the little things, and the bigger things slip into place. Problem is, I can do… big things, but little things not so much. Quit my job, move to London – sure, why not? Get another job, apply to university – no problem! But little things… I can't do little things.”

“What, because you… I don’t even know, because you had a flashback or something? That doesn’t count as a little thing. It’s medium-sized, at least.”

Willow smiled slightly. It was the first expression that Vivian had seen on her face that whole day. “You’re sweet, really. But you're wrong.”

Vivian, to her own surprise, shrugged. “Sure, maybe. But only because you haven’t actually told me what you used to do in your job, so all I’ve got are some vague platitudes and sympathy. Basically, what you’re saying is that you make big decisions and then regret them at your leisure. That’s fine. But at least you're _doing_ something. It might turn out to be the wrong thing – I don’t know. But I don’t see why it should be. You’ve made a life here, and so what if your old job pokes its head in a bit?”

“Well, if my old job does… _poke_ , then it will be huge. But let’s not talk about this anymore. Not only is there nothing left to say, but it’s time to tell people the shop is closing.”

Vivian opened her mouth, shut it, and paused for a few seconds before finally saying “Do you want to come back to my house? I mean, you look like you’re half-asleep and I have an abundance of coffee. I promise we don’t have to talk about this anymore. I just don’t want you to fall asleep on the way home.”

“There is nothing that I would like more than that, but I need to get home. I need to collapse into bed and sleep clean through till tomorrow.”

Vivian nodded once. “Fine.”

~*~

When Willow got home, she didn’t immediately collapse into bed. Instead, she called Buffy. She didn’t know what time zone Buffy was in, but that didn’t really matter. Anyone in their line of work got used to working at all hours. Chances were that Buffy was awake, and if she was awake probably the only thing that would stop her from answering would be if she was actively slaying something.

Sure enough, she picked up before it even got the second ring. “What’s going on, Will?”

“It happened again.” Willow said shortly.

Buffy sighed. “Was it-“

“I made a storm. I didn’t mean to, but there… never mind. I _think_ I’ve fixed the weather now, but if there’s a tornado somewhere or something, it’s probably my fault. Just thought I’d give you a heads up, in case you see any weird weather, it’s me.”

“I’m sorry, Will.”

“Don’t be, it’s not your fault. At least nobody was hurt. Although I flooded a few places, caused a load of property damage… I bet the insurance companies are having fun right now.”

“Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. It’s-“

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Ever since I activated all the Slayers I’ve been getting stronger. You know, I can’t even levitate a pencil anymore? If I try, I’ll lift up most of the city. Talk about not being able to do small things…”

“Listen, do you want us to come over? I’m just doing run of the mill things here, I think Xander’s more or less done in Portugal. I think Giles is busy, but I’m sure that Dawn would love a break from Siberia. It’s been months since we saw each other.”

“Oh, can you? I’d love it if you did, but I don’t want you to miss the apocalypse…”

“Nah, we’ve got a few months before the next one. We should catch up. We haven’t even seen your shop, and you can show us Big Ben and stuff. We could do with a holiday.”


	7. Chapter Seven

Willow didn’t sleep clean through the day after. She got up, and went to work. She was even there early, and she let herself in and started filling gaps on the shelves where customers had bought things.

Vivian was the next person in, which wasn’t really much of a surprise given that she lived so close. She was almost always the first person there. She was surprised to see Willow, and said so.

Willow shrugged. “I never was much good at being ill. I always used to do my schoolwork and stuff. Even if… yeah, I’m not much good at being ill. I like doing things.”

Vivian nodded. That made sense. Willow _did_ always seem to be doing something. Admittedly, right now, her eyes were hooded and there were shadows under her eyes that looked more like bruises than anything else, and she was pale as she had ever seen her… all in all, she looked like she _should_ have slept for at least a whole day. “You don’t have to, you know. We have plenty of volunteers in today.”

“I know I don’t have to, but what will I do if I go home? Potter around wrapped in a blanket with a cup of coffee?”

“Tea. This is Britain, remember?” Vivian smiled faintly. “Anyway, what happened to astrophysics and French?”

Willow shrugged. “I’d much rather be here. People are just the thing.”

“Oh, I see.” Vivian said. Willow looked at her in surprise. “You just want to infect us all.”

Willow laughed, for the first time since the storm, and Vivian grinned in response. “Oh, yeah. You’ve figured out my evil plan. You’re first.” Willow stretched her hands out in front of her, like a zombie, and began shuffling slowly towards her. “Braaaains.”

Vivian laughed, and ducked behind one of the free-standing shelves in the middle of the shop. “No! Not my brain!”

Vivian had expected Willow to continue shuffling towards her – either that or burst out laughing. She didn’t expect her to poke her head around the other side of the shelf, with a perfectly serious expression on her face. “Listen. There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Okay.”

“My friends are coming in next week. It’s just one day before they scatter across the globe again, but, uh, I was wondering if you’d like to meet them?”

Vivian didn’t really know how to respond to that. On the one hand, she was curious about what Willow’s friends were like – she’d heard stories about them, although admittedly not about what they actually did. On the other hand, they were Willow’s friends, who she’d never met and were busy running some kind of global charity, while she’d done nothing whatsoever and wasn’t likely to start any time soon. She was, in short, a bit nervous.

She was so busy not saying that she completely forgot to stop herself from saying “Why?”

Willow tilted her head. “What do you mean, why?”

“Well, um, they’re your friends, and you haven’t seen them in… months? Longer? And, um, they’re only here for a day. You see me pretty much every day. Why don’t you, I don’t know, show them all the touristy things while they’re here and catch up?”

“Because you’re my friend too. You’re my friend, they’re my friends, why shouldn’t you meet? I mean, I’m settling down here, and you’re here too, so… why shouldn’t they meet you?”

Vivian shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems weird.”

“Okay. That’s not really a problem. They’re a little weird too.” Probably more than a little weird, and not in the shuffling-around-the-room-pretending-to-be-zombies way. All too often, they were involved when people were shuffling around the room actually being zombies. But she didn’t mention that. “Please? I’d love it if you could meet them.”

Vivian smiled. She couldn’t help it. “Well, when you put it like that…”

~*~

“You know, your friends have really weird tastes.” Vivian said. “Why would you want to go to an ice bar in the middle of March?”

Willow shrugged. “Dawn picked it – she’s been in Siberia for the last couple of years. It’s probably her way of getting back at us or something. Maybe it won’t be as cold as we think?” She added, not feeling at all certain of that.

Vivian shook her head. “I doubt it. They’re handing out coats and gloves at the end of the queue. Anyway, Siberia? What is there to do in Siberia?”

“Oh, outreach programs, things like – Xander!”

“Will! Hi!” A big man with an eyepatch came in and swept Willow into a big hug. “How’s things?” He was followed by a smaller blonde woman who grinned sheepishly at Vivian. “Hi. I’m Buffy. I guess you’re Vivian?”

“That’s me.” Vivian nodded, then wondered what else she should say.

“Fortunately, she was prevented from having to think about saying anything else by Willow disentangling herself from Xander and saying “Oh, yeah. Um, Vivian, this is Buffy and Xander. Buffy and Xander, this is Vivian.”

“Hello!” Xander said, extending a hand.

“Hi.” Vivian shook it.

“Sorry Dawn couldn’t make it.” Buffy said. “Someone’s been giving Blue some philosophy books again, and she made Dawn miss her flight.”

Willow winced. “Ooh. Not the Nietzsche again?”

“No, some French guy I’ve never heard of.” Buffy said. Then she saw Vivian’s confused expression, and said “Blue’s a… friend of ours. She’s really called Illyria, but she has these blue streaks in her hair, so everyone calls her Blue. She’s a little-“

“Kooky.” Xander supplied with a smile.

“Not the word that I was going for, but sure.”

By that point they were at the head of the queue, and people were handing out great big coats and thick gloves.

“How cold does it have to be that we can only spend 15 minutes in there?” Xander complained, pulling his coat on. “I mean, I know everything’s supposed to be made out of ice, but _really_. I bet Dawn ditched us so we can all freeze without her.”

“Some polar expiation.” Vivian said.

“Huh?”

“Emily Dickinson? You know, I tried to think a lonelier thing, something something, some polar expiation? Because she’s been in Siberia?” Vivian flushed faintly, and busily occupied herself with the zip on her coat so that she could avoid meeting anyone’s gaze. “Never mind.”

“Makes sense.” Buffy said. “If I’d been in a cold place for that long, I’d make sure that everyone else was cold too.”

It _was_ cold. Even the glasses that the drinks were in were made out of the ice, as were the tables and the chairs. Buffy shivered. “Remind me not to do this again. I _hate_ the cold.”

Vivian, who had spent some time in Siberia growing up and didn’t think this was that bad, just nodded. “So where are you at the moment, then? Willow says you travel a lot.”

“South America. Been spending some time in Brazil. I’m thinking of going back to LA, though. There’s a lot of stuff going on there at the moment, and I’m sure Faith can handle itself.”

Willow smiled. “She’d love it there. Anyway, how is… everyone?”

“Faith is… still Faith. Giles is busy being Giles-y, and-“

“Kennedy’s fine.” Xander said. “She’s running things up in Egypt now, very busy and… yeah, everything’s good on the Kennedy front.” He cleared his throat. “Right. So, bookshops, is it? How’s that going? No dark tomes of great and evil power, I assume?”

Willow elbowed him, and might have flushed if it hadn’t been for the fact that the cold had already made her face go somewhat red. “It’s great. There are these lovely old books that people donate, and-”

“-there’s more biographies than anyone could possibly want.”

“Oh, come on. Cookery is worse. We have less than a shelf for cookery books, there’s always at least two boxes spare. Still, there was one time when a girl came in and bought the Lord of the Rings and a book on how to cook pancakes, so there’s that.”

“See? Cookery books aren’t all that bad. But is someone else asks for a biography of Churchill then I won’t be held responsible for the consequences.”

“Darn. There goes that plan.” Buffy said, smiling. “So I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you enjoy it then.” 

“Yes.” Willow and Vivian said, in fervent unison.

“I’m glad.” Xander said, then promptly knocked his ice glass onto the floor, where it broke. “Ah! My hand’s even gone numb through the glove!”

“Surprised that you’re sticking with the English weather though.” Buffy said.

Willow narrowed her eyes. “It’s not so bad.”

Vivian was hoping that she wouldn’t be called upon for her opinion. It seemed like something was going on between the two women, something that she didn’t really understand and which Xander was too absorbed in trying to get some life back into his fingers to see.

“Still, you’re a SoCal girl. You have about five minutes of sunshine a day here.”

“Not really. I mean, it’s March, so it’s pretty rainy, but it’s not that bad, really. There’s…oh.” Willow frowned. “You want me to come back, don’t you? You want me to go to LA.”

“What now?” Xander said, looking up in surprise. “We do? I thought you retired.”

“I have.” Willow said, staring at Buffy.

“Fine. Is it so bad that I want you to work with us again? I mean, you’re great, Will, and we could-“

“No. I’m done, Buffy. It’s… _nice_ of you to ask, but I’m happy here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Cool.” Buffy nodded, looking slightly abashed. “Dawn can definitely do it then.”

“Okay.” Vivian said. “What do you say to getting out of here before-“

“Yes.” Xander said immediately. “I’d love to get out of here before I turn into an ice cube.”

Buffy’s phone beeped, and judging by the message it wasn’t good. “Um, yeah. We really have to go.” She glanced at Vivian. “ _Things_ have come up, things we really need to go and sort out. Sorry, I wanted to stay here longer, but-“

Willow waved a gloved hand. “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t expect you stick around for all that long anyway – I’m kind of surprised that it was only Dawn that wasn’t able to make it.”

They all left, Xander sighing in relief as they began to warm up.

“Sorry.” Buffy said, hugging Willow. “For leaving and trying to get you to come with us.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Willow murmured. “It was great to see you. Maybe one day you’ll actually be able to see the shop.”

“Count on it.” Buffy said, stepping away. “Bye, Viv. I know we only met for about five minutes, but it was great meeting you and everything.”

“You too.” Vivian said.

Xander hugged Willow again. “So waaaarm…” He mumbled. “Sorry. I don’t like the cold. Anyway, I’m glad everything’s turning out so well and that you’ve found someone. I really hope we get to see you again soon, hopefully in circumstances that aren’t quite so cold.”

“That would be great.” Willow said, blushing heavily.

After they all said their goodbyes, and Buffy and Xander hurried away, Vivian turned to Willow. “So, that was a thing.”

“Definitely a thing.” Willow agreed. “Sorry it turned out to be such a short thing. I guess I should have expected it. Probably not the kind of thing that I should have invited you to.”

“Oh no, it was…” Vivian paused, looking for words. “Well, maybe, yes. It was weird.”

“We’re a weird bunch. Known for it on several continents.”

“Speaking of weird – what did Xander mean when he said that you’ve found someone? Do you have a secret boyfriend tucked away somewhere that you’ve been hiding from me?”

Willow went bright red. “No. I can say with absolute certainty that that isn’t the case.”

“Okay, so why’d he say that then?”

“No idea.”

“Riiight.”

“Seriously! I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Then why’d he say it?”

“I did _say_ that I have no idea.”

“Okay. But you would tell me if you _had_ found someone, wouldn’t you?”

“You’d probably be the first to know.”

“Well, that’s okay then.”


	8. Chapter Eight

Something was bothering Willow.

It was fairly obvious, Vivian thought. She seemed preoccupied. She didn’t pay much attention when people spoke to her. She was distracted. Even though she was still bustling around the shop, like she always did, she didn’t seem to be actually doing very much. She did things slower than she normally did, too.

It wasn’t obvious _what_ was bothering her, though. Vivian doubted that it had been the visit from her friends, because that had been a few days ago and she had been fine since then. Vivian wondered absently if it was something to do with Willow’s secret boyfriend, but she doubted that. It didn’t seem like emotional turmoil or anything like that. It seemed more like Willow was trying to work out a problem, worrying at it until it went away. She didn’t seem to have enough brain power to deal with anything else.

Vivian didn’t mention it, while they were at work. She thought about doing so, but she didn’t want to seem too nosy. Besides, she thought that Willow would probably tell her at some point.

She didn’t. Even when the day was over and Vivian was walking her to the station. Normally, they talked about nothing in particular, but this time Willow was quiet. She didn’t seem to be particularly aware of the fact that Vivian was even there.

Eventually, curiosity got the better of her. When they were in sight of the station, she asked “What’s wrong?”

“Hmm?” Willow said, not looking up. Then she seemed to focus. “Wrong?”

“ _Something’s_ bothering you. It’s been bothering you all day. You’ve been... distracted. What’s going on?”

Willow opened her mouth to deny it, but then thought better of it. She smiled slightly. “I got in. I’m going to be studying astrophysics in the fall. I mean the autumn.”

“Congratulations.” Vivian said. She didn’t sound surprised, because she wasn’t, but she did sound confused. Willow had been wanting to study astrophysics for ages. It was one of the first things that she’d said to Vivian, back when they had met in Somerset. She didn’t understand why Willow wouldn’t have told her – why she wouldn’t have told the whole shop. She didn’t understand why she seemed more like she was working out a problem than anything else.

“Thank you.” Willow said absently, not picking up on any of that.

“Something’s still wrong though.” Vivian prompted. “Isn’t it?”

“Not... exactly.” Willow said slowly, mulling over her words.

By that point, they were standing in front of the station. Normally, at this point, Willow would go inside and Vivian would turn and go home. Willow, however, appeared to be working out what she wanted to say and Vivian certainly didn’t want to leave this conversation until tomorrow. In any case, they were blocking the entrance to the station. “Come on. My house is right around the corner. Let’s talk there.”

Willow grinned. “Okay. I’m warning you, this conversation is probably not going to last long enough for us to even get there. I mean, I’ll probably say something, you’ll say I'm being... silly, and that will be that.”

“Fine. Whatever. Just... tell me. Something’s been bothering you all day, and if it’s the astrophysics thing then... can you just tell me why?” Vivian said, as they started walking.

“I, uh...” Willow looked sheepish. “I’m pretty sure that astrophysics is going to take a lot of my time. When I study something, I bury myself in it, I just keep going until I know it inside out.”

“Right.” Vivian said, not understanding Willow’s point. She hadn’t gotten to the point where she spoke half a dozen languages without immersing herself in them. “So?”

“The thing is, if I do that, then I won’t have time for... anything else, really. I probably won’t have time for the shop. I mean, I might visit occasionally, but-“

“This is that thing. That thing you said a while ago, where you promise that you’ll keep in touch but you’ll be busy and...” Vivian paused. “Is this about me?”

“I know that starting university – even if it is the second time, for me – is supposed to be some kind of big thing and all of that. Things change. I’ll probably find friends and stuff but...” Willow shrugged. “I don’t have many friends. Especially not ones that I spend time with. I mean, you’re in the same city as me, and you’re probably only here instead of, I don’t know, Moscow, because _I’m_ here. I don’t want to have another friendship fall apart just because I’m busy. I’ve done that too many times.”

“You could always carve out an afternoon or something.” Vivian said reasonably. “I know you. You work fast. I’m sure that you can manage to do anything that needs doing in a week, plus... further reading, or whatever, and still have enough time to have a free afternoon.”

Willow shrugged again. “Sure. I can do that. But eventually I’ll be busy with midterms or something – do you have those here? – and you’ll get a job and there just won’t be enough time.”

“Then that’ll be that. What? You were expecting me to say something else? You’ve got it into your head that this is going to end, you’ve been worried about it all day. Maybe there’s something that I can say that’ll convince you that it won’t, but I haven’t formed friendships with people who travel all over the place. I was always the person travelling. You say that you’ve had friendships that drift apart because of all of that, but I didn’t make those friendships in the first place. You asked me before if I was lonely, and I said yes, but the truth is that I didn’t really know that until this whole thing started. I was in a bubble of horses and languages and travelling and then you blundered in and then out of the blue I had a friend. I haven’t had one of those before, not really, so I’m going to try and make this work. Sure, there might be problems – but so what? I don’t have anything better to do.” Vivian smiled bitterly. “Literally.”

“I remember feeling like that.” Willow said. “In high school I had two friends. One of them flunked and stayed in town, and the other had... well, she stayed in town too. I could have left, gone anywhere. I got into basically everywhere. But... they were there. I could have gone and done something, but I stayed with them and now they’re... I don’t even know where they are. Some far-flung place. I’m friends with people all over the world, and I barely speak to any of them. One day, when some company or other snatches you up, don’t stay here because of me. Because someday you’ll have a chance to do something other than hang out with me, and you’ll have something better to do – and don’t pass it up because of me.”

“I-“ Vivian said, before freezing. Willow kept walking for a moment before realising that Vivian had stopped. She looked back, and saw that Vivian was staring at a doorway to one of the houses. It was, Willow realised after a few moments, Vivian’s house. It looked different when there wasn’t a massive storm.

It also looked different when there was a large, burly man in a suit standing on the doorstep, surveying the street. He looked like he was acting as some kind of sentry, but Willow wasn’t sure what he was supposed to guarding. None of Vivian’s windows were broken, and the door didn’t look like it had been forced. Besides, if some kind of robbery was in process, then the man couldn’t be more conspicuous. Something strange was obviously going on. Willow could feel magic welling up inside her, just waiting for the right moment, but she ignored it and went back to Vivian. “What’s going on?”

“That’s Marco.” Vivian said, her eyes wide. “He’s one of my father’s men. Some kind of bodyguard or something. If he’s here, then that means that my father is too.”

“Okay.” Willow said, feeling nonplussed. As far as she was aware, Vivian and her father barely spoke. She knew that he technically owned the house that Vivian lived in, but she couldn’t think of any reason why he’d show up now. “Well, he’s probably seen us. I mean, we’re standing in the middle of the street and he’s watching it. He probably knows who you are. We _could_ just turn and leave, but I doubt that it would accomplish anything much.”

“Right.” Vivian nodded, not taking her eyes off Marco. “We should probably go in.” She made no motion to move.

“Are you okay?” Willow put her hand on Vivian’s arm. “We _can_ leave if you want.”

“No, it’s just... I haven’t spoken to my father in ten years, and that was just to say goodbye when I went to university. He doesn’t just drop in, he doesn’t...” Vivian took a deep breath. “Right.” She walked up to the house. Marco stepped aside for her without a word. It wasn’t until she had taken out her key that she realised that Willow was standing just behind her. Willow gestured at the door, obviously asking if she could come in. Vivian nodded mutely, feeling intensely grateful.

They were greeted with the smell of brewing tea. A tall man with iron grey hair, an immaculate suit and pale, almost colourless eyes walked into the corridor. He had a cup in each hand, one of which he held out to Vivian. “I made some tea while I was waiting for you. I’m afraid that I didn’t make any for your friend. I wasn’t expecting company.” He said, his accent English, like Vivian’s. Other than that, he made no indication that he noticed Willow was there. He didn’t introduce himself, or ask who she was. He just stood there, apparently waiting for Vivian to speak.

Vivian took a hurried sip of her tea to hide her confusion, scalding her tongue in the process. “Ah! Um, Father, this is my friend, Willow. Willow, this is my father, Alexei.”

“Hi.” Willow said, giving a small wave. Alexei didn’t respond. Willow felt stupid.

“So.” Alexei took a sip of his tea. If he burnt his tongue, he gave no indication of it. “I see that you’ve left your house in Somerset.”

“Uh, yes.” Vivian said, feeling tongue-tied.

“She got a job.” Willow supplied helpfully. “We work together in a book shop.”

“Indeed?” Alexei arched an eyebrow quizzically, and said something in Russian which Willow didn’t understand. Vivian responded at some length, also in Russian, with a glance at Willow. Even though she hadn’t heard her name mentioned, Willow couldn’t help but think that they were talking about her. She made a note to learn Russian as soon as possible.

Whatever Vivian had said to him seemed to have some kind of effect. He turned to Willow and smiled, and Willow felt like the temperature in the room went up by several degrees. If she had thought that Vivian had been cold to Béatrice, it was nothing compared to her father. He extended a hand. “I’m sorry. I’ve been rather rude. Please accept my apologies.”

Willow shook his hand, and tried not to look confused. She didn’t think she was very successful. “Um, no problem?” She hadn’t intended to make it sound like a question.

“Well, I’m glad to see that you’re doing well. Please continue. I really must be going.” Alexei said. Despite his words, he didn’t move towards the front door – instead he went through the door that he had originally appeared through. Because he didn’t immediately emerge, Vivian and Willow moved further into the corridor only to be startled by his sudden reappearance. “Just disposing of my tea. Don’t want to leave rubbish lying around, do we?”

With that, he left.

After a moment, Willow blinked. “What was that?”


	9. Chapter Nine

There was a woman in the shop, and she was bothering Vivian.

She wasn’t actually _doing_ anything that was bothering her. The woman was sitting on a stool by the cookery books, flicking through a book about cake decorating. She wasn’t even looking at Vivian.

It wasn’t that she was one of the first people in, either. The shop was rarely busy in the mornings – it generally took a few hours before everyone started pouring in – but this woman had zoomed in almost as soon as they’d opened.

It was because she looked familiar. Vivian was _certain_ that she’d met her before, but she couldn’t quite place where. The other woman was about the same age as she was, so Vivian thought that she might have gone to school with her at some point, but she’d been to so many schools for such brief periods that she couldn’t work out where exactly it had been. Plus, after having encountered Béatrice in France and completely failing to place her, she couldn’t really be sure if she even _had_ gone to school with the other woman. Vivian supposed that she could have met her during one of her travels, but if that had been the case she was reasonably sure that she would have remembered. Of course, if she ruled out both of those that only left her with someone who worked for her father...

It had been a couple of days since Alexei had shown up, and Vivian was still a little shaken. It felt extremely strange to know that someone who had been the epitome of the distant father both knew that she’d moved to London and felt the need to make a visit. Even so, this woman wasn’t dressed as though she worked for Alexei – she wasn’t wearing a perfectly tailored suit – and if she _did_ work for him, then why would she just be sitting there reading a cookery book?

“It’s not that interesting, you know.” Willow said from beside her.

Vivian jumped. “What isn’t?”

“The back of her head.” Willow replied, gesturing at the other woman. “I mean, sure, it’s a nice head, but it’s not interesting enough to stare at it for the last ten minutes.”

Vivian flushed slightly. “I... I just think that I’ve seen her before. I _know_ I have, I just can’t quite work out where.”

“You could ask her, you know.” Willow pointed out, smiling.

“Not sure that’s a good idea.” Vivian mumbled.

“Sure it is.” Willow said. Before Vivian could respond, Willow walked up to the other woman. “Excuse me? My friend says she thinks she’s met you before.”

The other woman looked up at Willow, obviously a little confused, before turning to Vivian. She smiled, possibly because Vivian was blushing furiously. “No. I think I would have remembered if I had.” Her accent was strongly Italian.

“See? Now you know.” Willow said, looking as innocent as she possibly could. She didn’t think that she was particularly successful, so she took the opportunity to make a speedy getaway.

She didn’t get very far. “Uh, Willow?” Vivian said sweetly. “I just need to get something from downstairs. Would you mind taking the till for a little bit?”

Willow hesitated for a moment, darting a sheepish glance at the Italian woman who was watching the whole exchange with amusement. “Sure.”

Vivian went downstairs, and Willow moved to sit behind the till. The Italian woman moved up to the counter. “Hello.”

“Hi.” Willow replied.

“Is it possible for you to hold a book for me? I’m meeting someone for lunch in a little bit and I don’t really want to carry this book until then.” The Italian woman gestured with the book in her hand. Willow couldn’t help but grin when she saw that the cover of the book was cake decorated to look like a penguin, complete with googly eyes.

“Sure.” Willow replied. “I need your name, though. We can hold things in reserve-”

“Antonia Macari.” Antonia interrupted. She continued speaking while Willow wrote that down. “Also, I was wondering if you have any Tolkein? I looked at your fantasy section, but all you have is _Lord of the Rings_ and I have that already.”

Willow shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Tolkein is pretty popular, he tends to get bought as soon as we put him out.” Willow paused for a second as a thought occurred to her. She frowned. “Hold on a second – did you by any chance happen to buy _Lord of the Rings_ here? And a book on how to buy pancakes?”

Antonia looked taken aback. “Yes. How did you-“

Willow chuckled. “Oh! My friend says that’s her favourite thing that anyone’s bought here. That’s probably where she’s seen you before.”

Antonia laughed as well. “Well, I’m glad to be talked about.”

Willow nodded. “Uh huh. In a world where everyone wants Harry Potter and Churchill biographies, it’s nice to have someone buy something interesting every once in a while.”

“I aim to please.” Antonia glanced at her watch. “Anyway, I should be going...”

~*~

It was a few minutes before Vivian came back upstairs. When she did, she was carrying a boxful of books, which she put on the counter. Willow looked at it. “You got dragooned into filling the crime section?”

“What was that?” Vivian said, ignoring her.

“That was an observation. Because you have a boxful of crime books, and crime needs filling. I suppose, technically, it might be a deduction...”

“No, I mean what was that, with the woman. You know, when you... you know.”

“Not sure what the question is here, Vivian.”

“Why’d you go and ask her if she’d met me before?”

“Because you’d been staring at her for ages and it didn’t seem like you were getting anywhere.” Willow said calmly. “Also because being shy doesn’t really help anything.”

“What are-“

“I’ve tried being shy. I did all through school, did it for most of my life. I’m not talking feeling uncomfortable talking to people, I mean full on crippling shyness. I didn’t really talk to people at all.” Willow smiled briefly and gestured at herself. “Now I’m the sort of person who accidentally walks onto someone else’s property and strikes up a conversation.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all very well and good – but you can’t just go up to someone and ask them if _I’ve_ seen them. You can do that for you, but if I want to ask then I’ll do it myself.” Vivian held up a hand. “Don’t even say that I wasn’t going to. That’s not important. You shouldn’t just do things for me.”

“Fair point.” Willow replied, nodding sheepishly. “I guess it’s an old habit. I’m used to working with girls who... I guess you can say that they need a little prompting every now and then.” Of course, most of the things they needed prompting with involved Slaying things or magic, but not always.

“You quit your old job, Willow. You quit it ages ago. I know that it was important to you, but you can’t just treat everything the same way that you-“

“Can I ask you a question?” Willow interrupted suddenly.

“Can I finish my point?” Vivian replied, irritated.

“Oh, right. Sorry. Go ahead.”

Vivian took a breath to start speaking again, and then frowned. “Now I’ve lost my train of thought. What was I saying?”

“Not behaving towards everything in the same way that I used to treat work things?”

“Right, that. Yeah, don’t do that.”

“Okay. I’ll try.” Willow waited to see if Vivian was going to say anything else. After a moment, it seemed apparent that she wasn’t going to. “So, can I ask my question now?”

“Okay.”

“You remember when you showed up here? At the shop, I mean?”

“Yes.” Vivian replied, feeling a little confused. She didn’t really know where Willow was going with this.

“If it had been the other way around, if you’d been the one working here and I’d been the one outside – would you have come outside? Would you have said anything? I mean, I pretended that it was raining, that there was a reason for you to come inside and not... vanish, or go back to Somerset. Would you have... you know, done the same?”

Vivian thought about it. She could see that Willow didn’t _want_ her to think about it, that she just wanted Vivian to answer quickly, and she didn’t know why. “I... I don’t think so. Probably not. I would have sat there and if you’d come in I would have spoken to you, but I don’t think that I would have gone outside. Sorry.”

Willow shrugged, and looked off to the side. “I’ve done shyness. Done it to death. I’m not going to miss out on something just because I didn’t say anything. Even if it means trespassing and coming across a little bit weird.” She looked at Vivian, and grinned sheepishly. “I’m sorry for... embarrassing you, I guess, but I’m pretty sure I’d do it again.”

“Okay.” Vivian said, not really knowing what to say. She got the feeling that Willow was expecting her to say something, but she couldn’t for the life of her work out what that was. Instead, she slid the box of books towards Willow. “Well, you can make it up to me by sorting out crime.”

~*~

There were a couple of people fighting outside.

They weren’t physically fighting, although Willow wouldn’t be all that surprised if it came to blows sooner or later. At the moment, though, they were just shouting at each other. She could see that a few people were at the window, trying to see what was going on. She went to have a look herself.

It was two women. One of them was a blonde in an elegant business suit, who seemed to be fairly quiet and was mainly trying to get the other woman to calm down. She wasn’t being very successful. The other woman was more informally dressed, and had long dark hair and a thick Italian accent. It took Willow a moment to realise that it was Antonia.

Willow had some problems figuring out what was going on. For one thing, the pair kept switching between Italian and English, more or less at random, and she didn’t know any Italian at all. For another, Antonia’s voice was thick, as though she might possibly cry, and that combined with the fact that there was a window between them made it difficult for Willow to catch what she was saying.

She got the gist of it, though. It was a break up. Willow wasn’t quite sure what the reason behind the break up was – she could barely hear the blonde woman at all, she was being much quieter than Antonia – but it seemed as though it had caught Antonia by surprise.

The blonde put her hand on Antonia’s shoulder and said something in Italian, and then walked away. For a second, Willow thought that Antonia was going to follow her, or shout something at her. She opened her mouth as though she was going to, but then she just sagged against the window and looked down at the floor. She wasn’t crying, not yet, but Willow was fairly certain that that was going to come soon.

Willow was familiar with messy break ups. She’d had a few. She wasn’t going to just leave Antonia sitting out there. So she walked outside. “Hi.”

Antonia jumped slightly, looking up at Willow. “Oh. Hello.” She noisily wiped her nose with her sleeve. “You’re the bookshop lady, aren’t you?” She looked around, and seemed slightly surprised to find where she was. “Oh. Did you need me to move? I can, I-“

“No, no. It’s fine. Seriously. I just wanted to see if you were okay.” Willow winced. “I mean, you’re probably not okay, but... you know.”

Antonia didn’t seem to have heard. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have – I... I should go, I-“

“You don’t have to go rushing off, you know.” Willow smiled. “We have some Tolkien – it came in while you were gone. If you want-”

“ _No_.” Antonia said, with a vehemence that seemed to surprise them both. “I’m only here because of her. I mean, she suggested I read while I look for a job, and... I’m only in the _country_ because of her.”

“I’m sorry.” Willow said, mainly because it was something to say.

“I-I don’t know what to do now. I moved countries to be with her. And now, now I... what do I do?” Antonia said, looking at the floor. Willow got the distinct feeling that Antonia wasn’t actually speaking to her – she was just thinking things through out loud and Willow happened to be there.

For her part, Willow didn’t know what to say. She could offer some sort of platitude, but she’d been in situations like this before. Platitudes weren’t helpful at the best of times, and this definitely wasn’t the best of times.

“Something.” Someone said from behind her. Willow didn’t have to turn around to know that it was Vivian, but she turned anyway. “Do something. It’s the only thing that any of us can do.”

Antonia turned and looked up at Vivian. “That’s the tritest thing I’ve ever heard.” After a second, though, she started laughing. Admittedly, it was a laugh that sounded more like a sob than anything else, but still, it was a laugh. “Thank you, though.”


	10. Chapter Ten

The thing about magic is that it makes everything easier. With a few words and gestures, mundane tasks are suddenly accomplished. No more dishes to wash, no more need to vacuum. Spend a little bit more energy, and suddenly you have a collection of clothes that you can change on a whim, and a fridge stocked with everything you could ever want.

Of course, most magic-users didn’t use magic for that. Not just because it was frivolous. Not because if you start using magic for everything, you’ll eventually get to the point where you won’t be able to stop. Not even because using magic in that way would eventually burn you out and leave you unable to cast.

The thing about magic is that it is not easy. The forms are easy. Levitating a pencil just takes focus, discipline, a healthy mental state. But getting into that state was necessarily easy, not for everyone, and levitating a small object like that was about as easy as magic got. Magic needed discipline, time, focus, power – while it made everything easy, it wasn’t always worth the effort.

That wasn’t the case for Willow. It had always been easy. And then, one day, she’d activated all the Slayers, channelling vast amounts of magical energy through an immensely powerful artefact, and suddenly everything had been even easier, and it had become steadily more so over time. It had gotten to the point where she could do magic that most magic users couldn’t even dream of, and she didn’t even realise that it was supposed to be difficult. For every solution, magic was there, ready and waiting and _eager_. Where it might take a group of specialised magicians weeks to conjure a storm, she could do it in a moment, without even really meaning to.

The thing about using magic for Willow was that _not_ using it was hard. Magic was always, always an option, for everything she did. But, if she did want to clean the dishes, with all her power chances were she’d end up cleaning all the dishes in the country, and clean them so thoroughly that they’d be worn paper thin. And that was the _best_ scenario.

So she’d quit using magic, so that she couldn’t cause accidents. So that she didn’t have to spend hours carefully fixing weather systems all across the world, all while compensating for the fact that her power already overclocked everything she did.

Giving up magic wasn’t easy. She had to actively try not to use it. Sometimes the strain just got too much, and she had to use it.

When she did, Willow didn’t cast any active spells. She didn’t cast any spells at all. She just opened herself up and sensed what was around her. She wasn’t looking for anything – it wasn’t even close to a location spell – it was just her feeling things. Just another sense – except that instead of seeing reflected light or hearing vibrations travelling through the air, she felt magic. Because everything was magical.

It was what she had been doing in the woods, when she’d met Vivian. And it was what she was doing now, in her bed in her house in Wimbledon, as she unwound after a day of dealing with an enormous delivery of geography books that had all been more or less worthless.

But that day in the woods had been months ago. Back then, she had sensed magic, felt it in everything, but she hadn’t know what it was that she was feeling. Everything was magic, and all of it felt the same.

Now Willow could feel the solid magic of the stones around her, the slow and thoughtful magic of the trees, the electric blue magic zipping through the telephone wires and, last but not least, the watchful magic of the bugs, monitors and wiretaps that were liberally dotted all around her house.

It took her a while to figure out where they were. She wasn’t using any location magic – if she did, chances were she’d find out where every bug in the whole world was, and that kind of thing isn’t really very good for a human brain. But eventually she found them, and put them all on a table in front of her, and wondered who had put them there.

She could find out, of course, but without magic she wasn’t really sure _how_. She’d thought herself quite the hacker when she was younger, until she’d left Sunnydale and realised that most places had decent cyber security – which was to say, they had some kind of security in the first place. She strongly suspected that anyone who had gone to the trouble of bugging her had much, much better security than she was capable of overcoming. Not to mention that things that she did know about, like repurposed sex robots, tended not to exist or even be possible outside of a Hellmouth town. She could probably work it out, given enough time, but she didn’t really know where to start. 

So, instead, Willow just looked at them thoughtfully for a little while longer, wondered how long they had been there, and then she crushed them one by one and, for good measure, dunked them in water before carrying them outside and dumping them in a public bin about half an hour’s walk away.

~*~

The following morning, Willow was thinking about which one of the Slayers’ myriad enemies might want to bug her (the most likely was someone associated with Wolfram & Hart, she thought), when Antonia walked in. She was dressed in a pant suit, and she seemed a little bit nervous. It took Willow a moment to focus, another to remember who Antonia was, and then she waved at her. “Hi! You here for your book?”

Antonia frowned, then her eyes widened in comprehension as Willow brought out the book about cake decorating from under the desk. “I’d actually forgotten about that.”

It had been just over two weeks since Antonia had been here, and then broken up with her girlfriend. Technically, the book shouldn’t be reserved any more, but Willow had held onto it just in case. “Well, if you’re still up for cake decorating, it’s here. I’m afraid we haven’t had any Tolkien come in, though.”

“I have to say, decorating cakes isn’t nearly as much fun when there isn’t anyone around to cook for.” Antonia said, looking at the book. Then she blinked and looked up. “I just wanted to... stop by. Say that I appreciated you and your friend trying to cheer me up. Is she here?”

“She’s not in yet.” Willow said, and for a brief second she thought that Antonia looked disappointed. “You didn’t have to come all this way to say that, you know.”

“I didn’t.” Antonia smiled. “I have an interview at the British Museum in half an hour. I thought I’d come here first.”

“Oh! Congratulations.”

“Mm. It’s a junior archivist position. Technically it’s not that big a deal, but it’s the British Museum and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be lots of people interviewing for it.” Antonia took a deep breath. 

“You’ll be fine.” Willow said, wondering if this was what Vivian had felt like when she had found someone walking in her forest and talking to her about personal things.

Antonia shrugged. “We’ll see. I just thought I’d drop by and say hello.” She smiled briefly. “Maybe I’ll pick up the book after the interview.”

“Sure. Good luck.”

~*~

“Hey, Giles?”

“Hmm?” Giles said distractedly. Willow wondered what he was doing. It had taken him a while to pick up, which in itself wasn’t unusual, but he also sounded busy. Out of all of the Scoobies, Giles was the least likely to answer the phone if he was busy. The others wouldn’t be stopped by anything short of something trying to actively kill them.

“You worked at the British Museum, right?”

“Yes.” In the background, Willow heard a crash. She could vividly imagine Giles wincing. “Listen, Willow, as nice as it would be to reminisce, I am somewhat occupied right now.”

“What’s up?”

“We seem to have a gremlin infestation.” Giles replied drily.

“Oh?” Willow said, interested. “What kind?”

There was a pause. “There are kinds of gremlins?”

“Oh, yeah. There are the ones that are like balls of energy that like messing around with electrical stuff, which are general summoned by witches, and the little fluffy ones that generally cause havoc with everything.”

“Definitely the fluffy ones.” There was another crash, followed by a giggle.

“They don’t like loud, high-pitched noises. Scares them away.”

“ _Really_?”

“Uh huh. Ken found a nest of them a couple of years ago, and they followed us everywhere until we figured that out. If you make enough noise, they’ll run away, go somewhere isolated. That’s why people don’t tend to see them all that much.”

There was another pause, although Willow could dimly hear Giles saying something to someone. “Thank you. Anyway, you were asking about the Museum?”

“Yeah, I was wondering if you could help someone get a job there. You know, like networking and stuff.”

“I’m afraid not. The part of the museum I was involved in was heavily involved in making sure that magical artefacts didn’t accidently make their way into the public section. Most of the people there were Watchers, and there wasn’t really any communication between us and the more mundane part. I could look into it, but I doubt I’ll be of much help.” Giles replied. “I assume you’re asking about the mundane part?”

“Yeah. Well, thanks anyway.”

“No problem. Is there anything else you needed?” Giles said. He sounded like he wanted the answer to be no, so that he could go and help with the gremlins.

Sadly, Willow couldn’t oblige. “Yeah, actually, there is. I was wondering if you’d heard about any of the Slayer outposts being bugged.”

“No. No, I most certainly haven’t. I’d be very surprised if anyone tried. Why?”

“Hmm?” So, whoever had bugged her had bugged _only_ her, by the sound of things. Which was strange, because she wasn’t involved in Slayer business and hadn’t been for months, and if anyone was going to make a move against the Slayers then she was probably the worst target they could have picked. “Oh, just a puzzle. Would you mind having people check?”

“Of course. Willow, if someone is spying on you, you know that we can send people to deal with that?”

“It’s not an issue, Giles – you know how it is.”

“I see. Well, I’ll look into it and get back to you.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

~*~

“What’s up?” Vivian asked Willow, a while later.

Willow looked up from the books she was sorting. “The opposite of down. Why?”

“You look bothered by something.”

“Do I?” Willow said lightly. She made a note to try not to look like she was bothered in future. It wasn’t the first time that Vivian had picked up on that – while it was fine when Willow was musing about her future studying astrophysics, it was somewhat less welcome when it was about someone planting surveillance equipment in her house.

Vivian rolled her eyes. “Yes, you do.”

“I’m just thinking.” Willow said. Technically, that was true. Admittedly, right then she was thinking about what she could say to Vivian that wouldn’t give away what she was really thinking about. “You haven’t had an interview for a while.”

Vivian shrugged and looked down. “There’s only so many interpreting jobs going, and people generally want people with more experience. Rather than, you know, just someone who can speak the language. And I’m picky.”

Willow nodded. She remembered what that had felt like. She remembered when she’d been headhunted, along with Oz, and even though she’d been accepted by every university she had applied to, most of them had been backups that she hadn’t even thought about accepting. Of course, despite vaguely wishing that she could have gone elsewhere, there hadn’t really been an option for her except Sunnydale. Of course, going to a university in a town with an active Hellmouth wasn’t really something that most people would pick. “I was just thinking about it because Antonia dropped in today.”

“Antonia?” Vivian’s frowned.

“The Italian woman, the one who-“

“Oh, _her_.” Vivian interrupted. “Wait, she didn’t have an interview here, did she? I’m sure I would have noticed that.”

Willow shook her head. “No, she was up at the museum. Something about an archivist position. She just dropped in to say hi.”

Vivian looked briefly like she was going to say something, but then she decided against it. “Was she alright?”

Willow shrugged. “I assume so – she didn’t really stick around. Break ups are messy, but if she’s up for an interview she must be doing pretty well.”

“Do you think she went wandering in some forest for a little while?”

Willow grinned. “Could be. Worked for me.”


	11. Chapter Eleven

“When do you think she’ll come back?” Vivian asked suddenly.

Willow turned to her, straw in her mouth and a quizzical look on her face as she slurped the disgustingly healthy green concoction she’d just bought at a pop-up juice stand on the way to the station. She had no idea who Vivian might be referring to, given that the last thing they had been talking about was the very same disgustingly healthy green concoction she had just slurped. Vivian wondered how she could bear to drink it, and Willow maintained that it wasn’t that bad, really, and that she’d like it if only she tried it.

“Antonia.” Vivian clarified with a grin.

Willow shrugged. “She still hasn’t picked up her cookery book, so she’ll probably be back at some point. Plus, you know, there’s the fact that she _said_ she’d drop in again.”

“Right.”

“Why’d you ask?”

“Just a thought.”

“Smoothie for your thought?”

Vivian made an exaggeratedly horrified face. “Ew. I’ll sell you my thought if you promise never to make me have one of those.”

Willow looked at the remnants of her juice thoughtfully before nodding. “I’ll take that deal.”

“I was thinking what I’d do if I was in a strange country, and the reason I was there suddenly decided not to break things off.”

“Cheerful.” Willow commented. “I also feel I should mention that, despite being an American in this strange, backward, and wrong-side-of-the-road-driving country, that I was here _before_ I met you and that-“

Vivian nudged her. “I wasn’t thinking about you.”

“Well, good.”

“And… well, by this point I’ve been in so many countries by myself that I can’t really imagine doing it for someone else, but the thing is I was thinking that if I was in a strange country, without a job and without anyone I knew around, and there were these two nice women in a book shop that I already knew I liked – the bookshop, I mean, not us – then I’d probably go and see them again.”

“Makes sense.” Willow said.

“So I was wondering when she’d come back.” Vivian finished.

“We could start a pool. I don’t think many people would want in, back at the shop, because I don’t think anyone else has met her, but we could still start a pool. Just us two.”

~*~

In the end, they didn’t start a pool. If they had, though, Vivian would have won. Willow had thought that Antonia would be back within two days. Vivian had thought that it would be at least a week.

Sure enough, there she was, exactly a week later. Although she looked vaguely at the till when she came in – it was hard not to, given that it was directly opposite the door – she didn’t make a beeline for it. Instead she wandered off, looking at the shelves. Eventually she stopped at the history section and started flicking through a book on heraldry.

She stayed in the history section for quite a while, eventually gathering a small pile of books she was interested in. Vivian began to doubt her earlier deduction – she started to think that Antonia was more interested in the bookshop than she was in anyone running it. She supposed that made sense. Books weren’t likely to break up with you after convincing you to move to a strange city.

Then Willow came up, carrying a box of antiquarian books with pretty covers to make a window display. She made a perfunctory greeting to Vivian as she did so, and Vivian could see Antonia’s head whip around when she heard the American accent, and suddenly the woman who had been calmly and methodically looking through books had vanished. Antonia somehow contrived to knock over the pile of books that she had created – Vivian wasn’t quite sure how, given that she was several feet away. Everyone in the shop automatically looked over when they heard the crash, and there was Antonia, frantically picking up books, straightening dust jackets and hiding behind a veil of hair.

Willow saw that someone was there, but between the fact that Antonia was doubled over and Willow holding a large, heavy box, Willow couldn’t tell who that person was. So Willow bought up a stool, climbed up onto the window display area and started dismantling the current display, while Vivian watched Antonia, and tried to remember what she’d been like the last time that she’d had a crush on someone.

She couldn’t really remember. She’d travelled a lot, and had quickly gotten used to the fact that anyone she met probably wasn’t going to be around for very long. Even the people who worked with her father had a tendency to change at a moment’s notice, only a very few of them sticking around for more than a couple of months. But, if she had to think about it, she supposed that it would have been in college. It had been the first time that she’d really stuck around for a long period of time. She was reasonably sure that she hadn’t been a clumsy mess. She suspected that she had probably stared, possibly rambled...

Antonia walked up behind the display and opened her mouth to say something, but Willow was busy and didn’t notice, and Antonia shut it again. Vivian rested her chin on her hand and decided to watch the show.

After a moment, Antonia walked outside and looked through the window on the other side, but Willow had her back to her. Antonia raised her hand to tap on the window, hesitated, lowered it, and then she _did_ tap on it, fast enough that Vivian was sure that she was acting like that so that she didn’t have a chance to talk herself out of it.

Willow flinched, rapidly sinking into a low stance and looking around as though she might bolt. With the light reflecting off the window, Vivian couldn’t quite make out Antonia’s expression, but she was fairly sure that it was surprised. She knew that she was.

Then Willow saw Antonia, and smiled. She took a deep breath and made an active effort to relax, and then she waved for Antonia to come in. Antonia shook her head and gestured to her wrist – for a moment, Vivian thought the pair were going to start a game of charades, before she realised that Antonia had to be pointing at her watch – and gestured for Willow to come outside.

Willow straightened, looked at Vivian, and shrugged sheepishly. Vivian kept her face carefully neutral. “Hey, Vivian? Would you mind...” Willow gestured at the half-dismantled window display.

“Sure.” Vivian replied. Normally she wasn’t keen on working on the windows – she was always worried that she’d fall over, because she was moving heavy things around and there weren’t really many places for her to put her feet – but given that it would make it easier to eavesdrop, she felt perfectly fine with doing it in this scenario.

Vivian wasn’t normally the type of person to eavesdrop. Most of the time there wasn’t even anyone for her to eavesdrop _on_. But Vivian was fairly sure that Antonia was going to ask Willow out, and she wanted to see what would happen. She wanted to see if Willow would bring up her secret boyfriend. Plus, Willow had _asked_ her to sort out the window, so if Willow knew that Vivian was there, it was hardly eavesdropping. Of course, Willow didn’t know that Antonia was going to ask her out (admittedly, neither did Vivian), but that was beside the point. 

At least, that’s what Vivian told herself.

It was rather cute, actually, even though it was a little strange to see it from several feet above and through a pane of glass. Antonia stammered something about having to be somewhere soon, but she didn’t say exactly where (Vivian suspected that she didn’t have to be anywhere at all, but was just setting up an excuse for herself in advance so that she could scurry away if this didn’t go well), and then, to Vivian’s intense surprise, she asked Willow if she and ‘the English girl who thought she knew me’ were a couple.

Willow laughed, and looked nonplussed, and Vivian was glad that Antonia didn’t seem to have noticed that Vivian was pretty much right next to her, and that Willow had forgotten that she was there. “No! No, we’re just friends.”

Then there was a look of realisation on Willow’s face as she saw Antonia looking relieved, and Willow reached out a hand and started to say something, but Antonia spoke before she had a chance. “So, um. I was wondering if you wanted to get a coffee or something at some point. Maybe. If you want.”

Willow paused, and then she put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder, and Vivian could see that Antonia knew what she was going to say.

Vivian also knew what she was going to say. And she was right. Willow did turn her down. She called Antonia sweet for asking, and she didn’t mention anything about a secret boyfriend.

And then Willow said something that Vivian couldn’t possibly have guessed that she’d say. “I’m not going to be the rebound girl. I’ve been through that before, and it doesn’t work out well.”

Antonia nodded, and said something that Vivian didn’t quite catch, and then she walked away. Willow watched her go for a moment before turning to come back inside, and Vivian started noisily moving books around, as though to indicate that she couldn’t possibly have been eavesdropping, because no one could have possibly heard her over all this noise.

“Hey.” Willow said. Her voice was flat, as though she was tired. “I’ll finish that. I know you don’t like working in the windows.”

“Thank you.” Vivian extricated herself from the window with a little difficulty. “What did Antonia say?” She asked, in the most innocent way possible.

For a moment, she didn’t think that Willow was going to reply. “She asked me out.”

“ _Really_?” Vivian replied, and she thought she might have overdone it a little on the surprise.

Willow didn’t seem to notice. “Mm.”

Vivian nodded, and made a noncommittal grunt, and went back behind the till. She didn’t want to push it. She had a feeling that she was at the edge of something that Willow didn’t want to talk about, and Vivian didn’t want to force her into anything.

~*~

It wasn’t long before Willow was herself again. She was talkative, made jokes, bustled around. Everything seemed normal.

“Can I ask you a question?” Vivian said, on the way home. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted saying them. She hadn’t had enough time to think this through.

“Of course you can.” Willow replied lightly. “But if it’s about my secret boyfriend, I’ll just tell you the same thing that I’ve already _been_ telling you.”

“It’s not about that.” Vivian said. “Well, actually, it’s sort of about that. I guess you could say it’s about that adjacent.”

“Okay.” Willow said, looking confused.

“Are you one of... you’re like Antonia, aren’t you?”

Willow snorted. “I’m pretty sure I’m not Italian.” The pale redhead replied.

“That’s not what I meant.” Vivian said. “And you know that. I heard what you said to her.”

“You – you were in the window. Of course you did.” Willow said. Her voice was defiant, and Vivian couldn’t quite work out why. “So what did you hear?”

“You said something about not wanting to be the rebound the girl. About having been through that before.” Vivian said. “I mean, by itself, it doesn’t mean all that much. You could have been the rebound girl. Of course, then, there’s no reason for you to say that to a girl who’s asking you out, unless of course you were the rebound girl to, uh, _another_ girl. And then I started thinking about the fact that you said that you had a messy break up with someone, but I realised that you’d never actually said what the gender of that other person was. And if Antonia thought that, um, we were a.... a couple, then it’s not that much of a stretch to think that Xander might think that too. So there wasn’t really a secret boyfriend – or, um, maybe there was, and I was it.”

“Put a lot of thought into that.” Willow said blandly.

“I tend to overthink things.” Vivian said with an awkward shrug. “You know that. But... are you?”

It was Willow’s turn to shrug. “Probably. A case could probably be made for me being bi, but... yes. I am.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ve never been very good at dropping my sexuality into a conversation. ‘Hey, Vivian, would you like one of these green juice things? By the way, I’m gay’ doesn’t really work.” Willow said. “I’ve wanted to say it for quite a while, but, well, it’s been a long time now and it’s just been easier not to tell you.”

Vivian digested that. “Fair enough.”

“Fair enough?”

“Fair enough. What? Did you expect me to say something else?”

Willow ran a hand through her hair. “I admit, I was kind of expecting recriminations of some sort. Maybe hurt looks. Possibly some storming off.”

“I’d rather that you’d told me. _Obviously_ I’d rather that you’d told me. But I get why you didn’t.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Huh.”


	12. Chapter Twelve

“Eleven dollars and sixty-two cents for your thoughts.”

Willow looked at her in amusement. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how the saying goes.”

Vivian shrugged. “Yeah, but you have to adjust for inflation from when the phrase was coined, and then I thought I’d convert it to dollars because you’re American.”

“This _is_ England, though. I doubt you’ll be switching to the dollar anytime soon.” Willow said. “Interesting idea, though. Do you think that the value of thoughts depends on the nationality of the thinker? Would someone from a country with a comparatively strong currency have thoughts of greater or lesser value?”

“Hadn’t thought about that. It was just supposed to be a witty comment to show how many random factoids I’ve accumulated over the years.” Vivian replied.

“It definitely did that – I see those trivia books you read while you’re at the till haven’t gone to waste. I’m also impressed that you know the exchange rate off the top of your head.”

Vivian made a slight bow. “Thank you. It’s good to know that my economics degree wasn’t a complete waste.”  
They walked on in silence for a few moments.   
“You know that you didn’t actually answer the question, right?”

“What question? I’m pretty sure _I_ was the one who asked the questions, and mighty thought provoking ones they were too.”

Vivian gave an exasperated sigh. “Fine. I’ll rephrase myself. Also the exchange rate of your thoughts is now a little less favourable, so you’ll get less for them. Because, you know, I was asking what they were.”

“It’s August.” Willow said simply.

“White rabbits.”

“Exactly.” Willow said sagely. “I have no idea what they have to do with anything, but sure, they’re the problem.”

“It’s a phrase, something that people say on the first of the month – it might just be a British thing though.”

“I haven’t heard it before.”

“Well, in a little while I’ll tell you what I know about it from all those trivia books, but until then why don’t you tell me what it is about August that has you looking like you just bit into a lemon?”

“I do _not_ look like I bit a lemon.” Willow protested. “Also you’re just changing the subject so that you can make up some stuff about rabbits.”

“You don’t have to tell me what the problem with August is, you know. You don’t have to keep changing the subject. You can just keep quiet and I’ll assume that you have an unreasoning dislike of Augustus Caesar.”

Willow opened her mouth to say that a dislike of Augustus wouldn’t really be unreasonable, but then shut it again. “I don’t have a problem with August. August is fine. It’s what comes after August that I’m not so keen on.”

Vivian nodded. “I’m not keen on September being the ninth month rather than the seventh either.”

“That _is_ a bit irritating, but the point is that at the end of September, university starts.” 

“I can see why going to world-class university in two months to study something that you mentioned literally the first time we met would put a damper on your summer.”

“Bet you wish that you hadn’t paid nearly twelve dollars for the thought now, eh?”

Vivian shrugged. “If I was worried about the price I wouldn’t have brought up the inflation, and I’d have just paid you the standard penny. Not that I paid you at all. Anyway, this is about you not wanting to leave the shop, isn’t it?”

“Mmm.”

“Good to see that you’re getting your worrying in early.”

“I’m known for that.”

“So, what’s your plan?”

“Plan? Like a plan, plan? I had toyed with the idea of messing with the fabric of space and time so that I could both go to classes and stay here, but I figured that it probably wouldn’t be sustainable in the long run. What with the fact that it might end the universe and all.”

“I can see why that would be a problem.” Vivian said, smiling. “So you’re saying that you haven’t got a plan? You, the person who knew what they wanted to do when they quit before they’d even quit? You, the self-professed planner?”

“If people knew what they were going to do after they quit before they quit, the world would be a happier place. Also there’s the fact that I don’t actually have a timetable yet, and I don’t really know what my course load would be... there’s too many variables.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me.”

“Hey! You come up with a plan, then. I’ll even pay...” Willow’s eyes unfocused slightly. “Seven pounds for it?”

“Close enough. I do have a plan, actually.”

“Let’s hear it, then. I’ve already offered to pay for it.”

“Bear in mind that I only just came up with it. It’s not exactly a fully fleshed-out plan. Or, you know, necessarily a _good_ plan.”

“Right. In that case there will be some mercy in my mocking.” Willow held up a hand with two fingers close together. “A little bit of mercy.”

“I’m very reassured.”

“You should be, a little bit of mercy is a potent thing. But if you could get on with the plan at some point before we get to the station, that would be great.”

Vivian hesitated for a moment. The words, when they came, came out in a great rush. “You could move in with me.”

Willow blinked. After a moment, she rubbed her ears. “Want to run that by me again? I don’t think I-“

“Move in with me.”

“No, that’s what I thought you said.”

Vivian waited anxiously for Willow to say something, but it didn’t look as though she was going to. She couldn’t even guess what Willow was thinking – her face had gone completely blank. “If you could say something right about now, that would be really great.”

“What? Yeah. Um. Saying things. Right. Not... give me a minute.”

“Okay.” She gave Willow a minute. She gave her an extra seventeen seconds – she counted. Just when Vivian was about to say something herself, Willow spoke.

“ _Why_?”

“Well, we get along really well, and you’re worried that we’ll drift apart when you go to uni, and it worked fine while we were in France-“ Vivian said quickly.

“I left you in France.”

“Well, yeah, but that wasn’t because we were living together.”

“You’d be surprised – if I moved in, chances were we’d be at each other’s throats in no time.” Willow said slowly. She shook her head. “Moving in.”

“So... thought worth the money or not?”

Willow stood still for a moment. “I am going to think about it. I am going to get one of those green sludge things that you hate so much, and I am going to stare at you while I drink it so that you feel really awkward.”

“I don’t think that feeling awkward is really going to be a problem here.”

“Yeah, well, you need to feel more awkward.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I feel awkward, and I need to think about things, so I’m going to make you feel awkward while I think.”

“Right.” 

~*~

True to her word, Willow bought a cup of green sludge, and stared at Vivian while she drank it. For her part, Vivian felt suitably awkward.

After a while, Willow finished, and put the empty cup aside. Vivian couldn’t help but watch. “So.” Willow said, after a few moments. Vivian couldn’t help but notice that her teeth were slightly green, but she didn’t say anything. “Just to check... you’re not secretly gay, are you?”

Vivian shrugged. “Probably not.”

“ _Probably_ not?”

“Well, Freud says-“

“Urgh.” Willow made a face. “Never mind what Freud says.”

“Okay.” Vivian said. “I promise I’m not... _propositioning_ you, if that’s what has you bothered.”

“Okay. Fine. Second thing... have you considered online dating?”

Vivian frowned. “How did we move from me not being gay to online dating? I mean, I just said that I wasn’t asking you out.”

“I know, but you’re the kind of person who thinks nothing of asking someone to go to France with them for two weeks because they were lonely. Me moving in with you would be a bigger thing than that.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that I thought nothing of it. I mean, I’ve travelled all over the world by myself, asking someone else to go with me for pretty much the first time was kind of a big deal.”

“I’m betting that you didn’t come up with it on the spur of the moment, though.”

“I did, actually. More or less.” Vivian said. “But can we get back to the online dating thing?”

“Well, generally people don’t ask a friend to move in with them. They generally go looking for, I don’t know, whatever it is that people go looking for when they date online. You could find some guy or whatever and date him and then you can do the whole move in thing with him. You know?”

“That’s true. I am the extravagantly wealthy daughter of an oil magnate. I don’t think I’d want for suitors.” Vivian agreed. “But I _don’t_ want to do that. I want to live with someone who will happily talk about the going exchange rate of ideas. Even if they do drink green sludge.”

“As flattering as that is, I’m reasonably sure that you can find someone like that if you look hard enough. Plus, you can have sex with them, so there’s that.”

Vivian blushed. “Hey! I’m not the only one who’s lonely here, you know. You’re the one moping along because you’re going to be leaving the shop. Plus, even though it’s been months, you still haven’t gone out with Antonia.”

“Is her standing offer still – never mind. That’s not the point. _I_ don’t feel the need to move in with someone else just because I’m lonely.”

“I did say up front that this wasn’t a well thought-out idea, or even a good one.”

“You did.” Willow said.

“Right. So now that that’s cleared up, I feel I should mention that you have-“

“So, do you have a spare key, or what?”

“What?”

“Spare key? Secret butler to open the door? Hi-tech lock that only opens to your voice?”

“You know I don’t.” Vivian said automatically. “Are you saying-“

“Uh huh.” Willow grinned. “It’s been _ages_ since I did something ridiculous.”

“What?”

“Oh, you know.” Willow said, suddenly sheepish. “Like going wandering in someone else’s wood, or going to France for no real reason. That sort of thing.”

“You drink those green things all the time.” Vivian pointed out.

“Don’t start on that.”

“I don’t _have_ to – it’s still all over your teeth.”


End file.
